Phases

People are just phases

In the longer phase called life

In the shorter span called phase

Each arrives and so do they pass

Giving you what it was here for

Taking from you what it was meant to

But the memories linger

For many phases to come up

Some are fragrant, some are not

Most are bitter but a few still sweet

But you got to understand

That ‘the’ phase has passed

The person is gone

Not far far away yet far away

And when you feel too happy

Remember,

People are phases

And this too shall pass!

क्या है इश्क़

अरसे हो गए जब दुनिया को ऐलान करते
की हाँ इश्क़ में हैं हम,
आज सोचते हैं,
कमबख्त ये इश्क़ आखिर है क्या

कमसिन उम्र में,
जब पेट में तितलियाँ उड़ा करती थीं
उनके ज़िक्र के नाम से,
सोचते थे इश्क़ जो है यही है ;

जो थोड़ा होश संभाला
और जो खुद के गुनाहों का दौर आया
उन्होंने जो गुनाह नज़रअंदाज़ कर दिए,
सोचते थे इश्क़ जो है यही है;

जब इश्क़ भी इश्क़ के गुनाहों में संग गुनहगार हो गया,
और दोनों ने मिल के उसे दुनिया से छुपाया,
तब सोचा हो न हो, इश्क़ यही होगा;

मगर आज,
जब इश्क़ की आखिरी
मंज़िल पाने का मुकाम आया;
तब सोचते हैं,
कहीं ये महज़ सालों की आदत तो नहीं?

क्युकी तितलियाँ तो अब,
दूर दूर तक नहीं;
और गुनाह छुपाने का हुनर भी
खूब सीख गए हैं;

आज जब अरसे हो गए
उस ऐलान को ,
तब सोचते हैं,
कमबख्त ये इश्क़ आखिर है क्या!!   

मकां

मकां कई बनते हैं 

मन में ही बनते और उधड़ते हैं,

दीवारें चुनती हैं 

और फिर भी दरवाज़े खुलते हैं 

दरवाजों तक जाने वाले 

रास्ते चलते हैं , बदलते हैं 

जाने कितने मौसम बीत जाते हैं 

पर मकां अब भी बना करते हैं 

एक दिन कोई उस मकां का 

पता पूछ बैठता है 

तो कच्ची सड़क पर पक चुके 

पैरों के निशाँ बताते हैं 

के दीवारें तो ढह गयीं 

पर रास्ते अब भी 

उन खुले दरवाज़ों तक जाते हैं!! 

Bla(n)ck Hearts

The New cOlOr of heart is Black

With the new upgraded version of android, the androiders can now send a heart smiley (<3) in text messages and also can jump & show off about it. I just received one! And this little Black-heart icon takes me to yet another connect of the technology with relationships. Technology with relationships-what shit she is talking about? But yes,  I am talking about relationships with technology- how technology effects, influences and evolves any relationship.

Black & Blank Hearts http://bit.ly/QRtbhz

Communication is the mother to any damn relationship on this earth. As a famous tag line says -“Baat hogi tabhi to baat banegi” (when talking will happen then only something beyond might happen). In simple flowchart language- we talk>>know each other>>like/dislike>>result: Relationship (no matter what kind of). With all the state-of-the-art techniques and facilities of communication available, we often start taking people and their availability for granted assuming they are just a call away but in the process we tend to pile up  a huge heap of such taken-for-granted-pending calls that ‘they’ don’t remain anymore just a call away. They just drift Far Away!

We tech-savvy and so called new age people wonder how would it have been in black & white times , writing letters and then waiting for not less than 15 days for its reply; these days when I receive even a mail, I first go to ‘sent items’ to understand the context of the reply received. In even blacker and whiter times (ancient for that matter), the kings stayed away from home for decades in order to fight for his region and still returned back to find his wife waiting for him with all the love in her eyes; these days people go through a literal brain-wash if they are away even for a month and break up is the understood following route.

Our lives these days are very restless, changing places, positions and people frequently! We say “BYE(s)” very often now and add a “Stay Connected” to it as an understated suffix. But we don’t realize, when those byes convert into Goodbyes, forget connect we even loose contacts, and then when no one is left, we read/write such articles!

The original color of heart is supposedly Red which means a symbol of love, affection and warmth. In Black & white times, it must be actually red, when people really remain connected not by texts or calls or comments or likes but by hearts and thoughts! Now that everything else has become so colorful, the heart has taken a back seat! People love (or at least pretend to) till they see each other; brain works as the second heart and insensitiveness is named being practical.

Now I understand why android developers have kept the color of their Heart smiley- Black!

Off (the) Fence: Offence

Fences are installed to make sure nobody else intrudes in your territory, whether its land or relationships-enclosures are everywhere! The only way they differ is their appearance. The way they are imposed may only vary and what can remain constant is their presence.

Take any example of life and you will find the Fences there! A child is born and there are fences telling him what is right what is wrong, whom to play with whom not to play with; a girl goes out on a scholarship, there are fences prescribing whom to talk with, whom not to interact with; a new life when you start your career, fences of what to hide, what not to act!

All the relationships have fences too! There are standard benchmarks as per which the commitment towards a relationship is judged. Protectiveness and possessiveness are important ingredients of a bond but distrust is a separate phenomenon. Where acceptance and communication should stand first on approach, instead there are Fences-of delusion and disgust, and the moment you cross them it becomes the Offence!

Fences are no ‘new-world’ occurrence, they were always there! The great epic Ramayana could take birth only because of a fence that was crossed out of innocence and a decision taken by heart. So what if even after Agni Pariksha, the savior was rejected by the lady, the epic was written and the Fence is still debated upon!

Fences are meant to protect, not to uproot things with their sharp edges. Fences should define but not re-define the shapes! Fences can describe my territory to others but shouldn’t tell me what my territory is! It’s sad to say that fences don’t define my area of freedom; they cut into the margins of others and suddenly uproot me of my ownership! Here I cross the fence and it becomes Offence! Rhyming but bitter truth.

So if at all you were to define the boundaries, try to control the fences first. Implant them only when you are sure you are not intruding in other’s space. And even if you find them a little twisted, little distorted, don’t leave the land, and shift the fence a little! May be there is no need of going OFF the fence then and within the fence, there would be no offence!! 

Crossing Roads

Crossing roads has always been a Big deal! The traffic on both the sides, the thousand permutations and combinations to be applied in mind at once, taking the decision to actually walk the grey ramp with all the iron men coming from everywhere to raid you!

Friends were the people who had always made it easy for me. Holding (even grabbing at times) my hands, pushing me gently (at times almost dragging in speed) and taking me to that other end, the safer one! In fact whoever seemed concerned about me crossing the road was instantly added to the Friend list and the nostalgias further.

The Road Ahead 

Then, everything changed; friends flew away-work, jobs, families, lives. But the roads didn’t! They stayed where they were, dusty in sun, glossy in rains but still swarming with iron men, making sure I never dare to walk on them alone.

Now as a universally realized fact, there are many last-option-moments in life! I had to cross those roads, walking back from work, going to shopping, anytime and every time.

Commutation never stops neither in daily life nor in relationships. It ‘has’ to go on! But there is at least one option always hidden under the last option.

To my rescue there were Zebra lines on roads which legally meant that people crossing roads by zebra walkway will be less prone to accidental deaths. There was a faint one, the white almost married to grey of road but I could still find the patches of its bachelorhood and therefore relied on it for crossing the road with safety at least psychologically.

One day, rains happen! The road otherwise looks lustrous, the grey concrete shines today and the smell of soil makes everything hypnotic. I hastily keep walking in the wrong side and come to the Zebra spot and to my worst imagination, its nowhere! The marriage had succumbed the white line and all of it becomes grey, a dark blackish-grey! My last option also dissolves along with the dissolution of the white line! And I have No hope now, not even any hidden one in the last option!!

So, I look at my left, then to my right, mentally analyzing all the practical implications and the consequences that would follow. I again look at left, confirming & reassuring myself at the mental preparation, take  my right step out, out in the surface where it has always been more about hands than mind, and I ,Run..............!!!

A 'moment' Changes Everything

A decade long bond, which went through many roads, passed through many facades and escapades, fakings and confessions and still stands upright, structured  and re structured again and again. A relationship which passes the tests of time-trust-quarrels-admittance becomes the way the two of them are, towards each other, towards themselves.

There are long pages of a few important people in your life diary and you know this notepad is not spiral bound. Pages are not meant to be torn and flushed away, you like it or not, they will still be there, always and forever. They might fade a little but then comes a moment, when you go past ‘that’ page, revisit it and ‘that’ one moment changes everything. Everything here implies anything. Either you still have vision ahead for that page in your life or you just flip it over it, but if at all you do stop over that page for more than 2 minutes, be sure you have something still left to be read out loud from it.

These pages are the people rather the person(s), the souls that have mattered for so long in your lives, that seemed to be on top of all the priorities at one point of time in your life, so what if you don’t really text them every now and then today, you still have that feeling of ‘i-want-to-know’ how they are wherever they are. And these souls are not just the special some ones but also the Friends-the besties who always fought but still remained together; the people who could never fit into either of the categories –friends or specials but found a mid way for their own self, these guys are like the bookmarks in the life diary, so that to remind yourself on which page you were, they are the first thing you see.

Grammy-nominated artist David Gray’s “A moment changes everything” celebrates how a single moment between two people has the power to change everything about their relationship—a moment that takes their relationship to an elevated level.

So coming back to the moment when you somehow land on that page of your life, I say. Stick to it. That will be the moment that can decide what you will do ahead. I could have been fighting with my bestie all my life, getting irritated at small silly stuff but it might happen , that one blue day, when I am totally out of my nerves and would like to take a walk on a beach, the only person I could think of would be her .This one moment has changed  everything about her for me!

We just need to have ‘that one moment’ in our relationships-friendships and fights, to change it forever and for good. And when it comes, you just need to sense –this is it-the moment!

राहत

दूर मुझे करके ,
ज़रा सुकून तो हासिल हो जायेगा 

'वक़्त तो बीत जायेगा , 

मगर,

सिलसिला शायद बदल जायेगा 

नए बहाने

When the nights are not just 7 hours without sun, the senses refuse to entertain any second thoughts and the silence speaks for itself.

"कागज़ और कलम से अब राते इंतिहा होती हैं 

हसरतों की महफिलों को नया ठिकाना जो हासिल हुआ है "

Chai and Champagne

The froth in the pan had boiled down to my cup…and I am all excited to let it flow through my throat as soon as possible..yeah its chai…my God of all times…good-bad, happy-sad, romantic-pathetic..it has always been my cup of tea that has relaxed me the most .Its an addiction to me, something which is really necessary for me to survive .God knows the reason why I fast for him (chai is allowed in fasting) and so somewhere I have started relating myself to it. Now that’s a twist, how can anybody relate or connect him/herself to a cup of tea.?? .well I surely can., a chai has got so many stories to weave around it , so many fragrances to feel about it..it is as Indian as I am..takes birth from the heart of the earth to which I am a child, it being my motherland.; the halo affect it passes through of its taste being judged by its brown colour as like my original Indian brown complexion ; .stands as a medicine for almost (I believe) every ailment, just like I feel so good about caring for people around me ; its aroma speaking for its character just like our behavior speaks for our own character and last but not the least the satisfaction and the comfort it gives to its beloved when brought to the lips…..that’s why I say.. it’s my’ God of all times’.

   
But is it chai which works for everybody. .certainly not!! So for that herd of the crowd  there is a Goddess .”.Champagne”. Goddess it is because satisfaction from a  goddess comes tagged with a sexual appeal. Sexual appeal, the champagne has plenty of it..indeed .It is more ‘not so Indian’ as we think it could be. Yellow for it adulteration, froth for its agitation, airy for its hollowness, flashy for its luxury but still lovely for its ability to arrest its beloved’s senses. Beloveds it has many, to which she is always a master no matter whether in bottle or inside!!

I sat down with my pen to do a write up on my last visit to Goa but what a cup of tea and a mug of champagne has to do with it…it has, a lot to do….!! Goa to me seemed to be a mug of champagne and most of the rest part of the country, of course chai. Not hesitant to mention when I stepped out my first foot on the land of Goa, I was fascinated like anything. The words of that moment were excitement, curiosity, and thrill. I was least aware of what Goa was all about but I wanted to explore it, as soon as I can. And I put the entire blame on the vibes of that place to make me think that way. Definitely the place has certain vibes which can make even an old heart feel like a young apple.
    I wont exaggerate if I say that the beaches there can drive anybody crazy and so do they did with me. It was the blue surf that I could feel under my foot , between me and the already wet sand as if it was creeping in me, no matter I wanted it to accept it or not, as fast as it can. One time, second time, third time, it kept on coming to me and going back just like a lover tries to pull his beloved back to him after an intrusion. It was deeply agitated but still quite, serene, it appeared grey but it was not hard to judge how many colors it has sacrificed to become this and that was the first time I realized in my life that there are things beyond my cup of tea which relax me, to which I can connect myself better . Somewhere at the back of my mind I also wanted to be like the sea, carefree, absolutely.
This was the first peg of the champagne that I tasted in Goa and it had already started spelling its magic on me..!

 The second peg of the evening came in an other form, in the form of the places there ,the forts. You can just stand at one nook of those amazing forts there, spread your hands wide , feel the vast waterbed ahead of you and you will actually feel the force of buoyant without even being in water! Isn’t that a magic again but that happens, just as in my case. I felt terrifically weightless, as if there was nothing in this world worth caring about, no issues worth to trouble me anymore and this became the second shock of my life, I was feeling airy, in this hypnotic environment. It was trying to take me somewhere I have never been..


The third and the last peg of my first experiment with this amazing drink came with a hick!! The nightlife of goa  and became something which I could never forget in my life, at first it was simply a dance floor and a wave of music that was there but I never thought it could be more engulfing than the sea was. While sipping this third peg I had a hit, and suddenly I discovered an absolutely new way to forget everything, to dump your thought process for a while by just being lost. Lost in the music, lost in the rhythm, lost in that atmosphere, there was so much noise that nobody could stay quite, to survive you have to shout and being loud by default kills all the itchy areas of your thought process. Certainly when you can’t think you cant be tensed anymore!

I was numb after my three pegs, done, exhausted, out of my senses and then I found a 6th sense reverting back to me...this was something I was never aware of but even in that state I could make out that this was the real me!!! I discovered an entirely new part of me...that is adventurous, fun-loving, carefree and hates thinking! Something  which my chai never introduced me to.
I came back from goa and with my luggage brought the thought that it couldn’t  always be  the same old good thing that can satisfy you which you think it might be doing well. Give time and explore yourself and know what actually satisfies you ,a cup of chai or a mug of champagne and then…a lot of things will turn straight. Now when I sit in my window in a nostalgic encounter with myself, I still love my cup of tea but the memories of the bubbles of the long and sleek glass ooze my emotions with a gentle smile!!

Nocturnal Criminal

कुछ बातें रात की तन्हाई में शुरू होती हैं , रात के अँधेरे में ढल जाने के लिए 

दिन में जिनका कोई जवाब नहीं होता, और रात में जिन पर कोई सवाल नहीं उठता 

Spooonfuls Of Regret

Life comes handy to us, at various stages, and the moment we surpass the difficult ones, we settle down to think of recalling the ‘right’ and ‘not-so-right’ fragments of what we did to come out of it. It’s a universal truth that not all of us are ‘so-very-right’ in all our deeds but what do we do then, we rebel! Personal declaration of insurgency against the whole world does not necessarily give us what we want, but yet we do it ,and do it with great vigor only to impress our own ego at the end of the day. But does that eventually provides us with at least if not the mission but the vision , probably not . Life still seems to us as the jar of spices wherein each element has its own say to sensualise the taste buds. So once your taste buds are aroused, you have to arrange for the flavor of their desire and there  comes the “working-by crook” syndrome. When you do something and you don’t like it (at least for the sake of your own moral) its time you should prepare yourself to put into your mouth the spoonfuls of regret. We may think of avoiding such set ups ever in our lives but they do come, necessarily and spoonfuls of regret become the ‘silver ones’ only when accepted with the inclination of a more lithe turn of mind , of converting the regret to an experience and not the gaffe.

"जाने कहाँ रख दिया"

कुछ लिखा था  ख़ास, उस रात इक पन्ने में 

जाने कहाँ रख दिया ,
जो कैद किया था उस लम्हे में 

जब साथ तेरा नहीं सिर्फ तकदीर था, 

जब मुद्दा तेरा सबसे हसीं था ,

ढूढती हूँ उसे बेतरतीब , सब कुछ बरबस उलट पलट के 

जाने कहाँ रख दिया , 

जो ज़िक्र किया था तेरा उन लव्जों में 

घडी तो रूकती नहीं, बेशर्म हो भागती जाती है 

पल जो मुट्ठी में भींच लिया, बस आह उसी की रह जाती है 

आज याद जब उस पल की आई 

जब तेरी फ़िक्र, मेरी ज़मीन थी

परेशान हूँ मैं अब भी 

जाने कहाँ रख दिया ,

जो एहसास अब नहीं मिलता

 औरों में ||

लव्ह्ज़- ऐ-दर्द

कोई शिरकत है दिल में


कि आज तो क़यामत है


ये दिन भी है कुछ धुंधला सा


आज फिर किसी की रुवायत है


जो दर्द हैं दिल में


वो आँखों के मोहताज हैं


कुछ कहने की चाहत


आज है किसी बंद दरवाज़े में


बरसने दो इन आँखों को




शायद कुछ तो राहत मिले


ये दर्द है बड़ा हसीं


आता है कुछ ही खुशनसीबों के खजाने में .!

रिश्ते

एक काफिला ही तो होते हैं ये रिश्ते
आते हैं , गुज़र जाते हैं
कभी एक जगह ठहर नहीं पाते
बंजारों से , बेगाने से होते हैं ये रिश्ते
कितने अपरिचित, कितने अनजान होते हैं ये रिश्ते
कुछ पल को मिलते हैं ,
एक गर्माहट , एक मुस्कान सी देते हैं
पर समय के साथ
ये काफिले फिर उठ कर चल पड़ते हैं
कभी दिल न लगाना इनसे, कभी आस न जगाना इनसे
क्युकी आखिर,
एक काफिला ही तो होते हैं ये रिश्ते !!