Tyranny

I boarded the train on the empty platform

Next station Dadar, there’s gonna be a storm

Trooped off with me are two lazy fellas

One asks for chewing gum, other says ‘khallas’

With loud hush, train enters station of Dadar

Suddenly alert, crowd starts to gather

The train pushes more people inside it daily

Like a thin boy stuffs burger in his belly

Showers of chitchat all over on me

Like a group of birds released to fly free

Jabbering of people healing each other’s wound

Hush of locomotive making the constant sound

When the pace of mind becomes that of train

The spirit of Mumbai is passing through everyone’s vein

Blinking towers peep constantly from windows so narrow

Thoughts flash and disappear like city’s sparrow

Smell stinks in, sometimes when we are lost

But we have to bear it for a while at any cost

Towers at a distance, standing so tall

Though hands help up high, they make you look small

Shallow water running hastily beneath the bridge

A bottle of water comes out of a bag, cold as if out from a fridge

The furthest of the towers touching black sky

Mesmerized by it, even the stairway to heaven will shy

Contraplex of words finally slows down in lull

Pace of the moving bogie tries to get consubstantial

The view of final station glitters in eyes

Ears get straighten up to hear shouting and cries

The crowd gets ready to wake up and serr

Hands look for support and legs move together

Bereaved and pent heads then emerged out of door

Looking for a space to rest their feet on the floor

Fickleness of crowd pushes me out

I jump off suddenly and can’t even shout

Two of my fellas appear jabbering thereafter

Even in the lair of platform I can hear their laughter

I march towards the bridge, but they now resist

Frenetic are their minds, I know so I insist

To save time they serr over the rail tracks

Can’t be assailant now, so I can follow ‘em at the max

On the other platform stands a tall shaggy man

I see his black suit and then I understand

Sternly he holds the three of us and walks

This time neither my admonitions work nor my talks

That feeling of guilt, and annihilating I am now

I pray and cry, but can’t stop his gibe somehow

He bereaved us to pay for our crime

The precept makes me angry and I refuse this time

But it’s hard to invigorate my lazy fellas, I realized

So, with a compromised covenant we decided to end this fight

Years of struggle and so many words of gibe

At the end of all this, I am still paying someone bribe

With a scornful way, I start walking away

Let the path take me anywhere and let my mind have something to say

I pretend to be cognizant but, have shame inside me

Somewhere deep in my mind

I decide to end this tyranny….

Diya's

We say that, what remains in the end of a life is the contribution you have given in the history of this world. In the same way, what remains after a celebration blast of Diwali is the contribution you give to world in understanding the meaning of this festival and life as a whole.

Diwali, as we know it, is a festival of ‘Diya’s. One will be amazed to see how much brightness in one’s mind, a little lamp can bring, for a day or two may be. Yes, it has the power to enlighten one’s mind. The small diya fills every corner of our mind with rays of hope, love and happiness. This kind of mechanism we have till now seen only in Diwali messages. But hardly anyone bothers to imagine it in front of their eyes. With an ancient tradition of over two thousand years, Diwali is the most enthusiastically celebrated festival of India, among all generations. But, in total contradiction with this, it is indeed one of the least understood festivals too. This may be said in context of understanding the purpose , or wisdom in better words of celebrating it!

Diwali arrives in the middle of a financial year, when everyone is totally engrossed in her work. The life gives you a path to walk on and you hardly get any time to look around. It is the time when we miss a small hang out with friends, a little time with family, a brief introspection in your mind the most. A month or so before Diwali, everyone becomes alert about the arrival of this great festival of joy. Though it comes every year, we feel fresh enough to welcome it with a totally fresh mind. The planning for the celebration of this festival starts, with a great zeal. Thanks to the opportunist media and their role in keeping us alert, we seriously start thinking about planning well ahead of time for Diwali, so that nothing is left out in our celebrations. Be it in shopping or in travel, decorations or cleaning, gifting or sharing!

We all carry with us, many memories of childhood. For many of us, most of it comes from the five days of Diwali and the long vacation that used to come with it as a lovely gift. The tiny forts made outside home or somewhere out in the mud, which is an old tradition in Maharashtra used to give us a chance to revive the legacy of the great Maratha king ‘Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj’. The small forts made by group of kids give a sense of satisfaction and achievement. The joy of working with peers and the thrill of competing with other groups in making your fort more beautiful & stronger than the other is energizing. Plus, when it is done for a local competition, sometimes it brings with it many prizes too, which used to give us as much happiness as king Shivaji would have felt with his first victory at ‘Torna’(a fort in Maharashtra).  

The efforts we put at making the rangoli in front of the door more attractive than that made by others are worth appreciating. It is a way of bettering our skills. Because, there are very few occasions in the 365 days of a calendar year, when we get to look at the hidden artist inside us. This artist, which was thrown into a corner of the dark room in our mind, gets a chance to come out and revive a small piece of life. We hardly get time in rest of the year to remember this prisoner, let alone meeting her. The one thing that this small act of making rangoli, or decorating window of your house with colored light bulbs or choosing among many designer lanterns is, it keeps this artist in our mind happy. That’s why she never goes away and rests peacefully in the dark corner of mind for a whole year waiting for the next Diwali to come, where she will be shown light of the day. Definitely, over these years of adulthood, this prisoner has seen only lights of Diwali.

She must have been impressed by the beauty of it.

Whether it is making a ‘lantern’ which is popularly known as ‘kandil’ in Maharashtra with our own hand or making rangoli with no use of stencils, it decorates your mind as much as it decorates your house. Because, with every strip of paper that gets attached to the wooden rim of the lantern or every curved shape within periphery of white rangoli that gets filled with vibrant colors, we paint our mind with the memories of events attached with those colors. The colorful good memories definitely get bulky and hide the bad memories behind them, which I suppose are nothing more than shades of grey. By the laws of nature, it is very easy to find colorful pebbles in the sea of stones. The memories that we build up with our own creation of art, play the role of these pebbles. These wonderful stones then definitely make the surface of our thoughts smoother and shiny, so that we can feel them in a better way.

My friend Deepak says-

“Festivals are a means, not an end in themselves. They are like social glue, binding people from time to time. Because, otherwise in our busy pursuits, we would just drift away….”

I would say, appreciation of what we have got in life is in human nature. Festivals are the small opportunities when we can convey or regards to nature for giving us what we have. It is the time we admire the beauty of every natural thing that is present around us all the time.

The five elements of life or the five senses with the help of which we give shape to our feelings are worth giving a better look at. These senses have more potential than what they are generally used for. Mere protection of human body from external aggressions is surely not the purpose of making the senses being capable of doing so many extraordinary things. Hence, it becomes necessary to give them a chance, once in a while, to realize their ability to create human moods and shape our emotions. These senses touch our thinking in many ways, even without our knowledge.

We say that, ‘let the beautiful and bright diya’s enlighten our life…’

But hardly we think about what exactly is the enlightening in life that is carried out in Diwali all about.

I think it is about enlightening our senses.

These five days help us make our grip over these senses more firm and confident! Also, to make us reach in memories. Hence, the next time we say this we mean it-

‘Happy Diwali!'