पुराना शेर

एक पुराना शेर याद आया 
और शेर जब पहली बार कहा था, 
वो ज़माना भी संग आया
भूली गलियों में वापिस भटकने को
अपने मन का
एक बार और मचलने का दिल हो आया
पुराने शेरों की क्या बात कह दी, 
उनसे जुड़ा हर एक अरमान याद आया!
बीते अरमानों का जो मैंने हलके से हाथ सहलाया, 
सच..
वही पुराना शेर, जो उस वक़्त यूँ ही कह दिया था,
मुझे आज याद आया!
इत्तेफाक से आज फिर कुछ ऐसा हुआ
कि दिल भर आया,
वही पुराना मौसम निकला;
आज उसने फिर से सब कुछ दोहराया
आज फिर दिल भर आया 
तो मुझे फिर,वही पुराना शेर याद आया!


Also pasting the so much talked about "पुराना शेर" here: 
"ये गम भी मुझे अज़ीज़ है, 
ये उन्ही की दी हुई चीज़ है"

वो जगहें

वो जगहें हम जहाँ से गुज़रे थे कभी
अब दोबारा जब रूबरू होंगी तो शायद वो न होंगी
लोग अलग होंगे माहौल अलग होगा
शिर्कतें अलग होंगी और  शायद साथी भी अलग
तो दोबारा उन रास्तों को उस नज़र से देखना ही नहीं
गर देखा तो उम्मीद वही होगी
पर मंज़र अलग होगा! 

Love and Other Affairs

Love Affair: Intellectual Affair: Sexual Affair

All three mentioned above are different, trust me! They are far apart from each other and distinctive too or exclusive in their own ways as I might put it!

We are humans and all of us possess heart, brain and hormones. All these three are just there to fulfill desires of each of them.

The sanest one considered socially is the Love Affair. It’s the usual one as we all know it, fall in love, feel emotional, feel attached, feel special, feel possessive, feel every emotion you know for that one person with whom you are not really scared to spend the rest of your life. Reciprocation is the key in this one and we are not judged for carrying forward this one. We do it since we step into teens and keep applying Trial & Error till we finally decide who that ‘one’ is. Generally this one ends on the note of marriage and there it goes away from your life!

The next level could be the Intellectual one. Here you don’t do anything. You just talk, just let your heart out. But you talk in every possible way, you talk with mouth (like normal people do), you talk with eyes (You can only do that if the other person is really looking deep in your eyes & admiring them too for that matter), you talk with heart and you don’t leave a thing behind in your heart or in your nostalgic lanes for that matter. You talk society, you talk philosophy, you talk of the stupid things you did as child and all those eve-teasing incidents which still sit heavy on your heart. You talk sense (well, mostly) and non-sense. You talk it all out and in return are being told that no matter how childish you talk, you sound so mature! You hear too (sorry I forgot to add that bit earlier) and you hear a lot. You hear things unsaid and you hear the rhythematic oscillation of their heartbeats. You hear what they are going to say next and you say it before they say it and that’s everything about this sort of affair.

In the third one, I don’t want to describe what happens but something surely happens which hasn’t been happening so far.

It might be possible that we have all three of these with one person or all three with three different persons. It depends on the capability of those other people; but if you are involved in all three of them, be assured you are capable of something extra for sure! Your ten percent might be somebody’s 100% and their 100% might be 20% for you. So it’s totally okay to experience all of these- ‘individually’ & ‘exclusively’ with different people.  As they say “Nobody is born perfect’ but probably YOU were and then it became an equally annoying job to find somebody as perfect as you..!! So go ahead.

PS- Started writing something earlier but had to leave it in the middle, would just add that patch here-

Sometimes we do what we don’t want to do and yet we do it.  Because it might be, that what we did, was something we always wanted to do , but we thought, we didn't want to do it, coz we  thought we shouldn't (Social Parameter Alert) do it!  

Better to do what you want to do, coz we are anyway not doing what we were supposed to do!  

#Love_Peace_And_Happiness_To_All 

We ALL fought, learned, changed, grew stronger and hoped!

We all are fighting, all day, all time. Some are fighting bad bosses, some fighting work pressures, some fighting bitter breakups, some fighting their dreams! Some are fighting with others, some without those others! Some with themselves and some have already given up!

We all fought!

But in all this process, we all grew up a little, isn’t it? We all learned to ACCEPT and SURVIVE!! We learned to deal with the feeling of being rejected, with the hopelessness of not being loved back, the anxiety of hearing the truth about ourselves, the effort of putting ourselves back together, and if there was no one in sight , even patting our own backs just to keep the morale high!

We all learned!

We started pretending, we faked ourselves, we got overwhelmed and eventually managed to pull off with a little more controlled behavior! Finally when we thought we got this mask of pretention for the war with everything, we thought we became so cool, but oops! In all this process, we changed, and we changed a lot..!!

We all changed!

Just like a soldier returns to his camp after that long day of guarding the territory , we got back home , to ourselves, to our real selves at the end of the day and thought what the hell we were doing? We managed a great face all through the day but hello! What about now! I myself know the reality and how am I going to fight that?  So, we wore another mask – the mask of strength! We soothed ourselves, did things what we really liked, being with people who loved us even when we totally ignored them, we ate the way we liked and as much as we liked, we wrote whatever crap to our minds but cooled it off! We looked horrible but felt wonderful!

We all became strong!

And then we all got ready to fight once more if we have to with hope of being prepared for the next war , keep our masks handy so that we are not searching them around if the war is on without the bigul, and exhaled “this too shall pass…” !

We all hoped for better!

ALL of us

Goodbyes are fun

I might sound contrary to the usual belief of saying goodbye with a heavy heart but trust me, all of them aren’t that hard on you especially when you really want to get “rid” of a fewer lot!

Goodbyes are hard when you are leaving home, a place where you are most of yourself, not faking yourself even for a second, not getting overwhelmed and not being judged. Goodbyes from those- are definitely hard. Goodbyes aren’t hard at all when they are about homecoming, waving a pity hand at everybody whom you hated or cursed even for a split second- they are fun, mad “fun”.

Being "stuck"

Every one of us must have had this feeling of being “stuck” at least for once in our lives and talking from experience, being stuck surely sucks!! So what have you tried doing in those situations (in the stuck situations), tried to soothe yourself out? How?  By thinking something good? And what rather whom did you think about – your people back at home, right!! Saying goodbye to those are hard and these, who totally took the crap out of you, ha ha, its crazy fun (do try it sometime yourself)

But fun is no free ride right? You got to pay for it and pay really heavy sometimes! Infarct fun is this very temporary thing that you already know will perish in some time  and still you want to stretch a little more than you deserve and then you stretch it so much that before you realize , either the band breaks or comes back at you like a boomerang slapping you hard! That’s the price of fun.  In case the band had hit you, “that” goodbye would have been fun (the getting rid of feeling). If the band wouldn’t have hurt you even a bit and got lost somewhere, that goodbye would be hard.

But one good thing about those “fun” goodbyes, they don’t give you pain except a lesson. You say them not halfhearted but fully aware in your conscious that this it, this is the bottom line and here it ends. You don’t carry back a hope and definitely no false hopes. They might give you not-so-good memories for some time but don’t worry, when you are in a stuck situation again, you will only think of the “good memories.”

So keep your goodbyes fun , and to those with whom goodbyes are hard, don’t say goodbye to them, ever, at all!

If pain loves you, love it back!

Have you ever tried on a new exercise (like yoga etc.) or got a very nice body massage? Did you also feel those small lumps of pain in different parts of your body which abruptly come out and you tend to say, “OMG, I never knew I had pain in this part too”. Let me tell you something, these pains do not occur because you press the body there, they have always been there, you were just not very aware of them! But when you pressed, they started flowing out!

Doesn’t something very similar happen to us, in real lives?  We are not even aware of certain pains that exist and we go on living with them, making them a part of our lives, our personalities. We smile and laugh and do everything that looks normal to everybody everyday but when an old friend calls up randomly pressing ‘there’, the pains start to flow out, and we say, “OMG! You are talking my mind out. This is exactly what is happening with me.”

Pain is a very funny word and according to me, very creative too. ‘Funny’ because it can disappear anytime it wants, remain hidden or make you look crazy in front of others. (It’s so funny that it reminds me of “DEVDAS” – the forever sad character from Indian Bengali novelist ‘Sarat Chandra’). ‘Creative’ because it has given birth to so many masterpieces of art, literature and poetry. (I mean what percentage of artists create when they are super happy, if I am super happy I would rather go party and dance my heart out rather than write a poetry)

So something which is so funny and creative, I think it (or at least a part of it) should stay with everyone! It’s just that, we should be aware of its presence in ourselves.

Have you read of Latent heat in school? Well I have and as I remember, it spoke of a heat which remains latent (dormant) unless we create some force which evokes it. Similarly, the pain is the latent heat in all of us. Now you brood over it or turn it into a force- that depends on you!

Discover the pain in you and either USE it or remove it.

Get that great body massage often, the pain will go. Talk about that great body massage often, and the pain will make a great art piece!

यूँ ही किया करते हैं

कश्मकश में फिरा करते हैं
यूँ ही सुलूक बदला करते हैं
सोचते हैं,
और फिर अगले ही पल
ख्याल भी बदला करते हैं

सुलझे हुए धागों को
अक्सर  खाली बैठे
खुद में ही पिरोया करते हैं
उलझाया करते हैं
फिर सुलझाते फिरते हैं

ज़हन में कितना कुछ समेटे
हर किसी से मुस्कुराया करते हैं
पर ज्योहीं भीड़ छटे
मन में हर बात गुनगुनाया करते हैं

आजकल कुछ यूँ ही फिरा करते हैं
बस यूँ ही किया करते हैं! 

उथल पुथल

जानते हो,

मन की उथल पुथल किसे कहते हैं ?

जब दूर से आती अज़ान की आवाज़ भी बगल के कमरे से ही आती लगे,

शांत ठंडी बिखरी रेत भी खुद की गर्मी से पिघलती सी लगे

और बेहद सन्नाटे से उठने वाली सूँ भी कानो से चिपकती सी लगे

मगर दिमाग हांफ रहा हो ...,

के इतने ख्यालों को समेटते समेटते , सांस फूल रही हो जैसे ;

और बिन साथी के भी बिस्तर पर ढेरों सिलवटें पड़ गयी हो जैसे

के बेफिक्री से भरे पूरे शहर में , एक कमरा फ़िक्र ने किराए पे लिया हो जैसे

उथल पुथल ,

उसे कहते हैं !

Inside

Because its always good to let people know what exactly you thought originally while they make their own interpretations of your Abstract (Art)! 

You now what’s a mesh- it’s a chilman – a wall with checkered patterns giving you every glimpse of the other side of the wall but yet, closed! In Indian architectural history especially in Mughal era, the chilman has been used in profound! Take The Taj Mahal of Agra, all its beautifully marbled terraces surplusly surrounded by chilmaned railings. Go to Jaipur’s Maharaja Palace, the guide will show you a room – the common Darbar-e-aam where the king used to sit and hear the public and just besides the king’s hot seat you will find a chilman – opposite which the queen sat – from where she could see and hear everything what the pupil had to say and give her opinion to her husband, BUT the public couldn’t see her clearly and could only understand her presence via her reflection from her shadow filtered via that chilman!

Closer view: The MESH- Chilman

So that’s what a mesh is! A wall, mind you, it’s a WALL giving the pretense to be a window but a WALL, though with a difference by design and logic. I really think they had this great reason behind innovating such a beautiful pattern – the reason to be able to see everything from within and yet be hidden and away from everything. (I wonder if Film coated car window glasses were inspired from them too)

In any picture, a photograph or a painting, there are two things – basic- the object and the subject. In layman language, the subject is the living person and the objects are the materialistic things taken in use of to support the eventual meaning of that picture.

Closer view: Subject & Objects

Here the objects are simple yet lovable (read addictive)  items – the wine bottle, the coffee mug, an earthen ashtray with a few fumes of the still dying smoke inside it and a few flickering yet steady candles. And the subject, well the person finds it easier to hide behind the big fat belly of the wine bottle!

From all the detailed description above ( which I didn't really plan to), I will sum up my own comprehension of this piece in a single line-  Somebody inside a maze with everything he loves around him but yet can only enjoy a view of the outside and is trapped!

But traps aren’t always a negative word; some traps are by choice too! Do you remember any of those film stories where the mafia loses all his men and is terrified for his death and seeks shelter in a prison so that at least his life could be spared! Same!

Life is anyway a trap, a BIG BIG trap, but we all live inside it, enjoying the beautiful picture outside it via our chilmans of dreams and fascination! And off course surround ourselves with everything we love, to be able to survive till the day when the door opens and we walk out of it….!!

PS- I did not have any clue or intent as to what I will make when I started painting this one! But the bottle came on paper, then the mug, then the candles (they are actually books, though they don’t look like), the person’s half hidden face and then the rest! But it’s always interesting to add up all your scribbles to make a complete composition!

Technical PS- I used 7 different brush strokes in this picture! 

Painted Hearts

Describing my painting "Painted Hearts" here

"कभी कभार कई टुकड़े करने पड़ते हैं दिल के

ताकि हर इश्क को थोड़ी थोड़ी जगह दी जा सके"

Everybody falls in love at least once in their lives but most of them fall twice, thrice and even more! But each time there is a new love, there is a space shared in the heart.
Now by God's grace, we all have only one heart and we need to accommodate all the loves we had/have in the same lil heart. So what do we do, we borrow some space from the brain- the mind.  And thus always have TWO much on the mind!


This art piece shows a heart - a broken (rather shared) one- into two pieces - each piece occupied by a lady. And both of them are on the mind of a person.

There are way too many colors in this painting but with a reason- When one person adds so many colors to our lives, then if there are multiple , wouldn't life be like this? Extra Colorful! Also too many colors here imply the colorful character of the person always juggling between more than one thought on his mind. Won't his own heart be colorful (Painted) enough to be able to focus on more than one person in life?

An interesting fact remains that at least one of the two ladies sharing the heart know the reality (that's why the lady with Blue hair looks at green hair lady in the painting) and still sticks to her due space in the "Painted Heart".

But the people who can do this, like have two much on mind and still  love and focus equally, hats off to you guys! Great Management skills are required for this one. And off course a "Painted Heart" is all what you need.


PS- I am not sure People with Painted Hearts know a word called "Guilt"