LIFTING TIMES

LIFTING TIMES
From Brooklyn to Manhattan and from Manhattan to Brooklyn as mundane as it can get. All I do here is commute from house to work, count some green bucks, drink some Irish scotch, smoke some Cuban cigars and pretend to be happy. I have forced myself to romance the most talked about city in this world- New York. It has been good but not as great as I thought it would be. Nothing can come close to being at home in your country, with your family, having friends by your side. Roam the city streets you know like the back of your hands, where people spit and pee everywhere, blow horns like there is some competition going on and sweat like animals. Boy! Even the dirt of my country is more sacrosanct to me than any gold of this world. On the flip side it feels nice to be away from home where you can be someone else, more so if you are not all that happy being within yourselves.
In Brooklyn I live in a flat with my colleague, Rohan from Mumbai. He arrived just a fortnight back. I am working here from past six months as a Software Architect. All day I plant bugs in the software and ask others to fix them. In the end when the novices fail I fix the problem as if I were a genius. There are two kinds of people in this world one who fools others and the others who fool themselves. I am both.
We both had come early from our office that day. He gave the idea to go to a strip club. I had refused couple of times before. I said “Look I think it is wrong to go there”. Rohan had his own predispositions about life. He retorted “It is very difficult to define in life as to “what is right and what’s not?”. A person who believes in god thinks the non believer is wrong, a teetotaler thinks drinking is wrong, likewise a person who doesn’t go to strip club thinks the other clan is at the wrong end. The whole world is always classified into the doers and not-doers in order to define the rights and wrongs. Societal whims force us to live in prejudices and with passage of time we become prisoners in our own minds. I believe there is no wrong unless you harm anybody. This is one of the positive things about America, there are fewer boundaries and people are left to be themselves without being apologetic. Now shut up and get moving”.
After this long monologue I was both convinced and confused. I finally relented. He had been to a few dance bars in Bombay ,so he had a reason to explore the ones in New York. The club was less crowded that being a Thursday night. There were a few beautiful girls dancing in their birthday suits. The overall mood was quite enthralling. I knew I had to get drunk before few thoughts crossed my mind. I had two shots of tequila and then few pegs of Scotch, while my friend went to buy a lap dance. He left me to sulk. I was just staring at the lucky pole around which a Brazilian hot shot danced .My friend stayed back as I went back home with a sense of achievement and a tinge of guilt.
It was 2 AM when I hit the bed, couldn’t get sleep as it happens so often with me. I can’t sleep when I am not completely sloshed. I just slept with my eyes wide open. When I drink alone I tend to get delusional. Suddenly a few troubled dreams of childhood entered my thought process. Before I realized much, I felt something on my ears, they were my tears. I was just waiting for the sun to wake up.
I caught a train to Manhattan, feeling very frail, thanks to my sleepless night and a hangover. I reached the office premises quite early that day. I took the lift to reach my office stationed at the 47th floor. A beautiful invention is this Lift; it moves up and down, stops and starts at the press of a very innocuous little button. I had never imagined the same very lift would take me back.
When the lift reached the 18th floor everyone got off, but for one woman, whom I never bothered to look. The lift started, as soon as it got to the 23rd floor, it got stuck. I had a tingle in my stomach, feels good but strange to be stuck in a lift fitted with mirrors and a lady. I just turned to the mirror at my side as opposed to doing the obvious. In the mirror I saw a million reflections of myself and that lady. Déjà vu! It was like I had an extended session of my last nights dreams, but it was not surreal this time around. I just had caught an image of someone whom I knew better than myself, someone who meant more than any word that could describe her, someone whom I never had seen or spoken to in the last ten years. I could still recognize her very well. A millionth of a second is what it took for me to turn my head but the turn felt like a thousand years. I just held onto myself. I kept an unassumingly calm composure. Over the years I have become a very good actor. I can display the exact opposite emotion of how I really feel, today was the test of the actor in me.
I was filled with a mixture of emotions. I was shocked, angry and happy all at once. I thought I had swallowed my tongue. In a very feeble voice I said “Hey?” She sounded a bit more excited and said “Hey Avinash ! How are you?” We both had conveniently forgotten that we were stuck in a lift. She did much of the talking as I nodded, smiled, blushed and what not? I just gazed at her. I knew her only through my dreams. In my dreamland her voice had remained as it would be of a 15 year old girl. She had stopped to grow in my dreams.Her voice had the sprinkle of a sprite. Like a preface to her smile a dimple hiding in her cheeks would show up, then her hands would slide her hair behind her ears revealing those subtle little ear-rings. 'Twinkle in her eyes’ is an over used phrase but those words deserve her. She wasn’t a thunderbolt in the exact sense more like an evening drizzle. Only the connoisseurs’ could extrapolate the true essence of her beauty. My eyes were busy exploring her facial intricacies, never the less they acted well as if it weren’t gazing.
10 years earlier.
We both were studying in The Royal School in the suburbs of Bangalore. Navya and I were two inseparable creatures. She had a hell of a brain. She could think and do twelve different things at once. I was the next best in my class; I could do half a thing at a time. I always believed that energy in the brain should be conserved, not to be used profusely. She would read all the books in the world, watch all the movies in the town, play all the games that boys did. She would dance like a damsel and sing like an angel. She was the crowned princess of the school, and I was the geek who was always with her.

We lived nearby and used to go out every now and then. We both used to frequent a small hillock. Once on the top of the hill you could see a landscape leading straight to the sun. I had started to feel differently about her. I thought I would confide in her. We walked to that hillock and sat on the rock. I was very nervous. I asked her in a faint voice “what do you think about love?” She knew where I was leading to. She replied “talking about love is like dancing about architecture” I could not believe my ears. I retorted “from where do you steal such lines”. She just giggled. There was silence and there was more silence, as we gazed at the drowning sun. Cold wind blew through her hair. I could smell her hair. I sat just besides her holding her hands, as we looked at the last arc of sun playing hide and seek with the clouds whilst few birds appearing from nowhere flew in V-shaped formations.
I said to her “you know what! I had a dream last night, you had come dressed in a velvety gown, the droplets of moon caressing your cheeks till dawn trickled and just as I came close to you I woke up”. Navya just looked deep into my eyes. I felt a chill down my spine. She had held my hands like a million times before, but this was different. I just repeated her actions after a lag of a second, like we were performing in a symphony. I could feel the fading orange sun had entered her brown eyes. She drew me close. She slid her hands through my arms onto my neck and my cheeks. I followed the same moments, but my fingers were more into her silken hair. I could feel the coldness of her hair in between my fingers. I could second-guess what was coming, with me being Einstein! I went closer and kissed her. I could feel so many things at once. We both had our eyes closed and felt each others lips as I held her in my arms. I felt like I could swim to moon with her as we lay on the rocks gazing at the sea of stars each blinking at the other. We did not realize how twilight gave way to moonlight. She said “wasn’t I right when I said talking about love is like dancing about architecture”. I didn’t let her go of my arms. Her eyes were a bit moist. I could hear my heartbeat aloud, it was barking like a German Sheppard.
Nothing can equal first kiss, it is as pristine as anything could ever be. I was too innocent then to know what is to be followed after a kiss. We just walked back home. There was a mischievous smile when she said bye. The world was never the same again. It was like I had been gifted a new set of eyes and other sensory organs that could sense the non-obvious.
We had our exams a month later. After the end of the last exam I was waiting for her near the basketball court in our school. I saw a very dismayed Navya walk to me, she said “My father has got a job in U.S. and we are moving in a month”. He had got a job in NASA. I just held her shoulders very tight, their were tears in her eyes. I had an unbearable pain in my heart. Suddenly the world seemed so barren, the law of gravity no longer holding true. The whole world descended upon me. She said “I know but I am helpless. I will still come back every now and then. After some years I would surely return and be here forever”. I just tried to convince her, to confuse her but nothing helped, the decision was made. A month later she flew to Texas along with her family.
I was devastated. I used to feel the greatest curse is to be born, she appearing in my dreams every now and then would prove that wrong. She was like a part of my heart, there is auricle, ventricle and there was her. It was like she left a hole in my heart that could not be filled; the hole just became a part of me. I didn’t know how I would make it to US, considering our family condition the only way I could go was by swimming across the Pacific. The world was never the same place again. As time passed I convinced myself that if you truly love someone you don’t even need that person to be near you.
Back to the Lift
Time had stopped for both of us. We sat down on the floor of the lift. We just re-acquainted ourselves with the current situation of our lifes.She stays in New York and is happily married to an Astronaut working in NASA. I could not imagine her speaking in Southie accent, Every now and then I would look for subtitles down below to understand what she meant. She asked about my marital status. I answered “I have a girlfriend. Her name is Pooja, We both used to work together before. Currently she is back in India”. Navya was happy to hear that.
It had been 1o minutes now and there was no sign of any help. We both had remained oblivious to the fact that the lift was broke. For once I was thankful to the ever belligerent maintenance department of our building. On any usual day the lift would be restored within seconds, they have got software which signals an alarm so loud that it makes even the fire alarm look muted. But it was not a usual day, was it? Software’s are also very human in nature. They don’t work especially when it is an emergency, probably it gets nervous too. But I was not complaining.
In the meanwhile, I opened my laptop and showed her a poem that I had written after she went back. I said “This was written a long time back, don’t know how much of it is true now. I am just showing this as it belongs to you. I am just shedding my baggage”.She read that poem intently.
FIRST LOVE LASTS

When I saw you for the first time
my heart just stopped to rhyme
felt like some one sowed a seed
wanted to know what did it need

First time u gave that look
I was pushed to a nook
guessed it was just a crush
thoughts just seemed to rush

And the times u took my name
it didn’t sound all the same

Whilst you first held my hand
my pulse sunk like sand

you used to give me that smile
made me a prisoner of your jail
you laughed at my jokes
I blushed at your pokes
The thoughts we shared
and the colors we reared
said that we would be there
till the end of world stared.

But then TIME made us depart
All this ended before the start
The last time I saw you I knew
I will never again see you

I have never seen you since
become a fish sans fins
struggling to swim over you
drowned in this ocean of rue

Now your memories comes along in waves
And Leaves me cold in lonely caves
Now I see darkness even in sun
the moon also appears to burn

You've entered my veins so deep
all that I see is you in my sleep
you’ve made my dreamland your home
I open my eyes to find myself alone

The Emptiness with which you have filled me
has left no room for others to be
I have made you grow inside
So that I can feel you are beside
You are my first love and my last
and it will last
even after the world is lost.
She said “I am sorry I had to leave, but I had no other options then. I tried reaching you but I was scared. Whenever I came to India I would go to Bombay, where most of my relatives are, I never could come to your place. Neither did you make an attempt to reach me. We both should be thankful to our lives and all the people around us that we have moved on with our lives. Whatever we share is too pleasant to label it with any predefined adjectives or nouns like love or friendship. A relationship that is wider than any friendship and deeper than any love. A pleasant memory is all that remains now”. I smiled and said “Yeah probably you are right. The memory and pain both are very pleasant to me which I shall treasure.”
The lift door finally opened and we exchanged our contact details. I promised to meet her soon.
I met her and her family over the weekend. Her husband is a very nice guy, they make a very good couple. He is an astronaut and wants to go to Mars. “I have already been there once, it is kinda cold there” I joked. I don’t think he got that one. I bid Good bye to her one more time, but this time it was rather pleasing.
A month later
I am on my way to Bangalore flying somewhere over the Pacific. As I ponder over a few things all I see is endless blue beneath and above me, I can’t help but thank god .I am discovering new ways to define him. I think God is like a blind dentist performing a root canal surgery on us. He constantly pricks at the wrong nerves and gives shrill pains only to prepare us for more. The onus is on us to strengthen our resolve and chew various things that he puts into our mouth. Every heartbreak every ounce of joy every incident, everything in life is so intricately embroidered. All these things are going to happen to everybody and we should be thankful to all these events, as that’s what made us who we are.
So kind of you Mr.God, the blind orthodontist of all our lives.

FALCON’S ANTHEM

I travel at the speed of light
can pierce a diamond shining bright
I see the sun before the dawn
of all the kings , I am the don

I fly above the rest
in the horizon lies my nest
I know that I am the best
I put all limits to test

Its not the wings that make me fly
It’s the fire to win and not just try
I shall fight till the blood goes dry
So I live even after I die

I am a FALCON
I am the One
and One is All
---------------------------------------------------------------

lost mind can write nething

alone in a crowd
crowded at home
silent when loud
loved when alone
...
crowned when won
disowned when not
u aint the one
unloosen ur knot

-------------------------
THE END
drown the sun
burn the moon
close the shop
get bak home soon
-----------------------
Leave or LIVE
moonlight
sunshine
some rain
wet clay
children s play
morning dew
nothing new
nothing turns
nobody learns
i tell u we must leave
before we stop to live

---------------------------------

FLOAT away
cracking bones..
bleeding eyes
soundless cries
no help flies... See More
incinerating nerves
unending curves
twisted fate..
things get late
flickering mind
senses blind
finnicky thoughts..
not yet lost

and things i write
need no light
-----------------------------------

PEEL OF MOON

peel of the moon
cant get top no soon
walk besides the clouds
stars light up our roads

Gal We cant get much higher

float around till insane
go onto back of moon
where ther aint no noon
its night all long
sun doesnt belong
here
time and money not to fear

crashing meteors lighten
the skies as i tighten
my clasp and kiss ur lips
awaiting the final eclipse

Gal we cant get much higher

speed of light now so slow
as thoughts fly and flow.
like a dream tht doesnt end
girl if ur soul u cud now lend

i just love to love u
i just want to hold u
i just want to hurl u
i just want u

Next time around,
Gal we can get more higher
-----------------------------------------

LIFTING TIMES

LIFTING TIMES
From Brooklyn to Manhattan and from Manhattan to Brooklyn as mundane as it can get. Its been 4 months in this country, I simply can’t love it. Although I have forced my selves to romance the most talked about city in the face of this earth- New York. All I do is commute from house to work, count some green bucks, drink some Irish scotch, smoke some Cuban cigars and pretend to be happy. Nothing can come close to being at home in your country. Being with your family, having friends by your side. Roam the city streets you know like the back of your hands, where people spit wherever they like, blow horns like there is some competition going on and sweat like animals. Boy! even the dirt of my country is more sacrosanct to me than any gold of this world.
I am working as a Software Architect in a software firm. All day I plant bugs in the software and ask others to fix them. In the end when the novices fail I fix the problem as if I were a genius. There are only two kinds of people in this world one who fool others and others who get fooled. I am the former. Apart from architecting bugs , I am not doing anything else in here. I am just waiting to be deported back to my country.
It was just another day when the sun rose. I caught a train to Manhattan, bought a hot dog in the Corner House , ate it as I walked till the entrance of my company. It was 9.30 AM on a Thursday morning. I took the lift to reach my office stationed at the 67th floor .The lift moves at around 20 ft/sec. It baffles me that how anybody can travel so fast in a small compartment that suffocates and scares the hell out of people, A beautiful invention is this LIFT. It moves up and down ,stops and starts at the press of a very senile looking button, people get on it and get off it wherever they want to. I had never imagined the same very lift would take me back.
When the lift reached the 38th floor everyone got off, but for one pretty women, whom I never bothered to look. The lift started, as soon as it got to the 58th floor ,it got stuck. I had a tingle in my stomach, feels good but strange to be stuck in a lift fitted with mirrors and a llady. I don’t know what the hell happened to this lift . I just turned to the mirror at my side as opposed to doing the obvious. In the mirror I saw a million reflections of myself and that lady. I suddenly felt like some one dug a large hole in my heart. My pulse was racing like a Ferrari in a Grand Prix. I just had caught a tinge of a image of someone whom I knew better than myself, someone who meant more than any word that could describe her, someone whom I never had seen or spoken to in the last 12 years. A millionth of a second is what it took for me to turn my head but the turn felt like a thousand years. I just gasped and saw her. She was as startled as I was. I just held on to myself. I kept an unassumingly calm composure. Over the years I have metamorphosised into being a very good actor. I can display the exact opposite emotion of how I really feel. Today was the test of the actor in me.
I was filled with a mixture of emotions. I asked her “Hi , How are you ?” She responded “ Hey Avinash ! How are you?”. We both had conveniently forgotten that we were stuck in a lift. She did much of the talking as I nodded, smiled, blushed and what not?.I just gazed at her. I knew her only through my dreams. In my dreamland her voice had remained as it would be of a 15 year old girl. She had stopped to grow in my dreams..Her voice had the sprinkle of a sprite. Like a Preface to her smile a dimple hiding in her cheeks would show up, then her hands would slide her hair behind her ears revealing those subtle little ear-rings. 'Twinkle in her eyes’ is an over used phrase but those words deserve her. The more I saw more beautiful she looked. She wasn’t a thunderbolt in the exact sense more like an evening drizzle. Only the connoisseurs’ could extrapolate the true essence of her beauty. My eyes were busy exploring her facial intricacies, never the less they acted well as if it weren’t gazing.

12 years earlier.
We both were studying in The Royal School in the suburbs of Bangalore. Navya and I were two inseparable creatures. We were the thickest of friends. She had a hell of a brain. She could think and do 12 different things all at once. I was the next best thing in that school and I could do half a thing at a time. I always believed that energy in the brain should be conserved and should not be used profusely. In my defense I can say that I was at least half as good as she was and had the potential to be like her. She would read all the books in the world, watch all the movies in the town ,play all the games that boys played. She would dance like a damsel and sing like an angel. She was the crowned princess of the school, and I was the geek who was always with her.
Things remained the same up until one day in the summer of 1996 she came running in the school corridor to meet me and said, “My father has got a job in U.S. and we are moving out in a week”. He had got a job in NASA. I was angry, I was angry at my country, I was angry at her father and at that new country to which she was going to move. I just held her shoulders very tight , their were tears in her eyes. I had an unbearable pain in my heart. Suddenly the world seemed so barren, the law of gravity no longer holding true. The whole world descended on me . I just had nowhere to go. She said “I feel very sad but I am helpless. I will still come back every now and then. After some years I would surely return and be here forever”. I just tried to convince her, to confuse her but nothing helped, the decision was made. She just kissed on my cheeks and went away. Saying ‘Good-bye’ isn’t exactly my forte.
Back to the Lift
Time had stopped for both of us. We sat down on the floor of the lift. We just re-acquainted ourselves with the current situation of our lifes.She stays in Houston, Texas and is happily married to a scientist working in NASA. She asked about my marital status. I answered “I got married to my new found love. She is the love of my life. Her name is Pooja, We both used to work together before. Currently she is back in India..Navya was happy to hear that.
It had been 1o minutes now and there was no sign of any help. Its only now that I took up my phone and made a few calls to get out of the lift. We both had remained oblivious to the fact that the lift was broke. In the meanwhile, I opened my laptop and showed her a poem that I had written after she went back. I said this was written then and belonged to her. She read that poem intently.
FIRST LOVE LASTS

When I saw u for the first time
my heart just stopped to rhyme
felt like some one sowed a seed
wanted to know what did it need

First time u gave that look
I was pushed to a nook
guessed it was just a crush
thoughts just seemed to rush

And the times u took my name
it didn’t sound all the same
Whilst u first held my hand
my pulse sunk like sand

you used to give me that smile
made me a prisoner of your jail
you laughed at my jokes
I blushed at your pokes
The thoughts we shared
and the colors we reared
said that we would be there
till the end of world stared.

But then TIME made us depart
All this ended before the start
The last time I saw you I knew
I will never again see you

I have never seen you since
become a fish sans fins
struggling to swim over you
drowned in this ocean of rue

Now your memories comes along in waves
And Leaves me cold in lonely caves
Now I see darkness even in sun
the moon also appears to burn

You've entered my veins so deep
all that I see is you in my sleep
you made my dreamland your home
I open my eyes to find myself alone

The Emptiness with which you have filled me
has left no room for others to be
I have made you grow inside
So that I can feel u r beside

You are my first love and my last
and it will last
even after the world is lost
----- U Wrote this.

I said “This was written a long time back and don’t know how much of it is true now. I am just showing this as this belongs to you. I am just shedding my baggage ha ha ”.
She understood what I meant. She was happy that I had moved on and did not remain a prisoner of past. She said” We both should be thankful to our lives and all the people around us that we have moved on with our lives. Whatever we share is too pleasant to label it with any predefined adjectives or nouns like love or friendship. A relationship that is wider than any friendship and deeper than any love. A pleasant memory, this is all that is and this is all that will be between the two of us”
I just could not agree more with what she said. As I have grown up, her image within me has metamorphosised from friendship to love to being this pleasant memory.But then you would ask me, why don’t you continue to be close to each other like some old friends. I beg to defer. “This is just how it is and that’s the way its going to be, between the two of us” and I kinda like it this way.
The lift door finally opened and we both happily bid adieu to each other and went our ways..

GURUPRASAD R
IBS SECTION F

The Jingle of a Jungle


An endless river kissing a seamless ocean?
A harmless moon eclipsing a mighty sun?
A floating island lost in a sea?
Aloof stands a leafless tree?

A smiling baby sitting alone?
A wounded soldier away from home?
A heart longing for the love of its life?
A messiah promising to end all strife?

Underneath present a labyrinth of facts
secrets hidden in these abstracts,
unraveling itself as time goes flying,
discovering the truths that were lying.

We change time or times change us or do they?
Miracles happen as often as u may
A bird swims and a fish flies
If no one cries, no one tries.

Everything under the sun is as simple as you want it to be.
Everything under the sun is as complex as you let it be.

- Guru

COME AGAIN for ONCE

COME AGAIN for ONCE

through the eyes of my dream
caught a tinge of her image
in a land where truth is as i seem
handing me a bit of vantage

u recognize me only here
ur voice i can dimly hear
as few thoughts I tried to weave
u take an abrupt leave

can't get out of this slumber
heart cant get more numb'er
this despair is so sweet
sans this I am incomplete

i eulogize my pain throu thee
i love this,may it forever just be..
wounds that need no heal
keeping things on an even keel

the hole in my heart is so deep
that if you take a peep
and simply look down
u'll never reach the ground

come again once more in my sleep
be one with my veins so deep

WHO AM I????

WHO AM I ----- ??????
I am a diamond who is gone crazy
around me no one is lazy
For me time is money
And I haven’t got any

The sun shines on me all through
Rains drench me leaving no clue

A bullet pierces my heart
A bomb explodes in my womb
tomorrow I promise a new start
so bury ur past in my tomb

I just run and run like hell
coz a milion dreams i need to sell
I cannot afford to sleep at night
coz for a million dreams I am the light

I am the seller of dreams
I am the buyer of extremes
I am the hyperbole of life
I am the metaphor of strife

GUESS WHO AM I --------------------




I am the city of god and daemons alike
MUMBAI is my name , hope on if u like

THE DOPE SONG

**** THE DOPE SONG****

Give me a Piece of Dope
laced with Light of Hope

after having which
will end my every little glitch

Make everything around me Surreal
I cannot stand anything real

I cant stand on my nails anymore
get me to the other side of the shore

Give me a Piece of Dope
laced with Light of HOpe

----------- GURU ( Jan 2009 )