Metamorphosis

One night, the starry eyed boy went to sleep and never woke up. In his place, woke a man. The was no lightening. No firecrackers. No elephants. No trumpets. No cartwheeling clowns or beautiful women with roses. It was like any other day. It was not sudden like the caterpillar turning into a butterfly. No... it was slow and almost unnoticeable. Like the tree that slowly grows taller. Like the gradual accumulation of dust. Like the slow weathering of rock into life bearing soil. Apparent, undeniable and eventual... yet invisible to the naked eye.

He wore his man shirt, his man pants, his man shoes... and walked out into the world of men and women.  

Her eyes followed me all night... and I did not wonder what she saw. He told me about his mother, but I cannot remember her name. His dog died when he was four... everything dies eventually. Her sex life is of least concern to me. His dilemma about which shirt to wear does not excite me. Will it rain tonight... I do not know. Will the wind blow like this all through the day... I doesn't make a difference.

Like the sight of a colorblind man... in time, the frivolous and the pointless will slowly blend into the background and only the purposeful shall glow. When the metamorphosis is complete, I shall sit with her next to the fireplace and live on the warmth of the sacrificed embers as the years slowly burn away... and life will be complete... hopefully.

To willingly seek bliss in the wonderful institution of love by abandoning the concept of absolute freedom for they cannot coexist within the same mind... that is the fate of the entangled two.

The Elusive Fulfillment

Don't be mistaken my friend, do not worry.
I have not strayed,
I have not become lost.
I just haven't reached my destination.
Forgive me for the delay,
I left the paved road some time ago,
And chose to take the path through the forest,
I could not resist.
The journey could not have been more meaningful.
For I now believe that in the woods lies The Elusive Fulfillment.

Aaj suraj dhala nahi
Aaj woh doob gaya.
Lehron ke aaghosh mein
Aaj woh simatt gaya.
Kal subah hum milen ya na milen
Itna toh yakeen hai
Suraj nahi toh kyun hon khafa
Saath mere mera chaand hai.

Kabhi toh socho ke dil mein aisa kya raaz tha.
ki kal ka mu'min,
kyun aaj kaafir bana.

Bridge

Between what you were born as and what you will go forth to become, lies the longest bridge you will ever cross. One that you must cross for your existence is not of longing, but of learning. What you have become when the sun sets and the darkness begins will carry you through because you are marvelous, in every aspect of your being the miracle of every day life. Remember, you are the reason the bridge exists for it becomes a part of you with every step that you take.

In between what you are and what you will become, you are never lost. You just haven't reached the other side yet.

I search, though in vain for the place where I will surrender. Where the existence of my self shall be visible to me through the colored glass of life. Such a place of hope and freedom, is not of pieces of string strung in enchanting hymns, of blinding lights or of waves that wash away the fears. It is of a moment which transcends love, joy, pain and life itself. It is in between the darkness and the light which I only feel like the blind man feels the sunlight. Moments of surrender born out of freedom and into life as I have come to see. I search for them till the endless chime of the clock, for I have tried in my ways to be free.

The greatest tragedy of man is that the darkest memory of War and Death is unfortunately also the greatest memory of Victory and Conquest. In this paradox of Life and Death, we have never sensed true freedom, for it can never exist among the bullets, within the concrete walls and burdened under the gold coins.

If only I had enough money to buy the whole world.... I would set it free of it's own captivity.

Somewhere, I have no faith left in the principles of conquest. The concept of victory I believe defies everything I have come to see as logical and true. True to the laws of existence. We have come a long way from the fields of the Motherland. When we stepped off the road of biological evolution and stepped into the tarmac of social evolution, we became remnants of everything that we were.

They say one realizes life in its aspects over the journey that one makes; from childhood to adolescence, through youth and the prime, to finally come to old age and death. All through this journey, we have come to think of life as a competition of survival, at the end of which the victorious shall stand at the highest podium. The more i learn of our history, the more i feel it is foolish.

Each of us are a solution to the complex equation of 'Life', captive to our own desires to be victorious... to be remembered through the pages of time as "The most successful species".

Peace

Peace is difficult.

Difficult to find, difficult to maintain, difficult to understand... and even more difficult to comprehend. In the course of one life you will stumble upon many moments that will make you question the very concept of peace.

In the morning dew, I found God.
In the searing sun, I found Truth.
In the darkness of the night, I found Hope.
In sorrow, I found Man.
In between all this, I stumbled across Peace.

Crossroads

Like travelers we have traveled. Who didn't know where they began, why did they pack their bags in the first place and to where they were headed. The thing about traveling is that once you have gone around the world, you always reach the start. The foolish ones say they never went anywhere. But you never come back same. Nor the place, nor the person. Never the same.

And so here we are again... the people who began the journey... the place where it all began... at crossroads.

Arrival

Once a boy asked the sun "Did you know, from the time you were born, that you would burn? That you would burn out and die?"

The sun replied "In our essence, we are what we are. We will be what we will be. One day I will burn out and die, but I cannot blame the fire for that. It burns in me... into me... through me... And it has brought me where I am. What would i be without my flame?"

The roads that I have passed through.
The moments that have passed through me.
The rivers that have flown through
and the wind that has blown.
Have all brought me to this.

The trees and the birds never really die. The howling wolves come back to the hunter moon. The wind doesn't die. Nor does the sunlight or the waves. We never die. Nor do our emotions.

Everything is either trapped in a cycle to come into the light again or buried till its time. The eventuality of every moment that is yet to come defines death and rebirth. In the time that we spend awake, we form a being that collects the sleeping moments of our inner self. Over the course of time, these moments arise and fall like the waves.

Relentless and infinite.

The time has come to die.
To die and be reborn,
To wither and be sown.
In this endless cycle of loss and gain,
It is time to flow again.
The days were alive,
and we lived because we were alive.
We ebbed and flowed,
Were swept out to sea,
Only to come back again.
Crash on the shore.

But let us now cover the sun.
Let us pretend.
Let us say it is night.
Let us imagine the moon and the stars.
Now that the darkness is here,
Let us slip quietly into the streets
and disappear.
The time has come to die.
For that is what we believe.

Storm

The worst of storms come without a warning. Ripping apart the sky of your being and tossing you around helpless. They come and they go, but leave you restless... to live with a fear of the horizon.

It is through these storms that man learns true meaning of strength. To hold on... to get up and walk... and to build again what is no more. To capture the thunder and hide it away for no one to see. So when the rain stops falling and the lightening disappears... the thunder resides in the heart.

To think of man as the smallest piece of a puzzle and then to think of him as a puzzle in himself. Few will ever understand what the soul of man is and even fewer will understand what it desires.

To march forward with time as a friend and an enemy,
desire more from a drop of water than from the ocean,
hold a breath until it becomes a storm,
to believe in the seed as much as the tree.
Very few will ever understand the heart of man.

To understand the origin of desire is to overcome it. After years of fulfillment, a man's heart always feels empty... devoid of every emotion that resembles or is reminiscence of something full. It is our fate and our greatest failure to not see that the purpose of desire is not of collection and conquest, but of knowledge.

In our deepest sleeps we conjure up our deepest desires from the depths of our mind and feel them as ripples across the thin skin of our eyes. 'Subconsciousness' we say! In these limited dreams from which we wake and have no memory of, the bellow of infinite trumpets will always be that of a funeral march and not one of victory.

The one in the coffin spoke of a dream.
The one in the dream, spoke of a desire.

We came walking to these shores,
A very long time ago,
With nothing but dreams and hopes
Of a better life and love.
The confusion that was mine was also yours
And we planted it in the sand
The waves came and took it away
Only to wash it ashore
But the times have changed and so have the shores
We are not the same anymore
And so the journey begins... again.

Blue skies seem like a distant memory
The storm has come and stayed like an unwanted guest
The wind sings through the windows
Howling.