The Universe Speaks

Music makes the world seem worth it all. The heartbreaks, the sorrow, joy, love, nature, everything makes sense. Life should be written to music.

Sugary sweetness, overflowing and sickening is okay but for a very very short while. Like a 3-minute song with lots of repetitive chorus that sounds like sugar-high cheerleaders, the most annoyingly catchy tune. Hearing the same song years later reminds you of the time you heard the song first, how foolish you were back then. How much more foolish you are now.

Dance music is like the heart beat. Life dances to it. The sun sets, trees grow, trains rush keeping beat to this music.

Sad music is pure joy. There is a sense of pure love that washes all over and hushes the mind filled with thoughts that are so fast and mixed up that they hurt. Sad music wishes all that away.

Violins and guitars are the voice of the universe talking to us in the language in which everything resonates.

Lyrics to a song are sometimes like sugar in honey - pointless, sometimes like a fly in honey - annoying, and sometimes honey itself - sweet.

3-dimensional

I find it impossible to view this as a 2 dimensional pattern.

Why blog?

I recently started writing at a new blog : lifeandpepper.blogspot.com and I have been thinking about why I write on a blog made public for everyone in the world to read and write some thing there while trying not to talk about my identity in the real world while also giving out the blog address to people I know personally. (Phew, long sentence)

What do I write on the internet for. Is it some kind of deluded sense of being a good writer / an attempt to improve on skills / a record of life and the way I am going through it / trying to tell people "look I exist, I am witty, I am talented!!!!" and sounding like a big bore really.

If you blog, tell me why you do. I want to know what the reason for this endless number of blogs that are written and very rarely read.

The Moving Sky

The night clears out and I see

A sight that doesn't fail to move me

Clouds against an azure blue

Then a powdery sapphire too

The blue contains the blazing sun

Till the day is almost done

A dull grey behind a setting orb

Decked with orange purple daubs

A mysterious blue black it fades into

That holds in it (or just seems to)

The choicest jewels strewn around

To be carefully hidden in the morn

Then the wind paints in cloudy hues

And with these clouds the sky too moves

It moves, changes and carries me along

It fills me with a moving song

From my cozy spot in the park,

where I lie till it gets dark,

A thought gently knocks on my door

And I wonder on the grassy floor.

Something that only the eye can see,

That in truth is just fantasy

That which I can't feel and touch

Can touch and move me oh so much

An illusion, a show, a magic trick

Is that all it really is?

Maybe. But it still is magical

Music and Love

This music,

It flows all over me

Holds me

Washes all over me

The feeling

Rushes right through me

Thrills me

Rushes right into me

It tells me tales

That life is beautiful

That there is God

That I am loved

Yet it pains me

Makes my heart weep

It shakes me

It wakes me up

I need it

I long for it

I make it and in turn

It makes me

Mixed emotions

Of pain and intense joy

Of this moment

Fleeting by

Time Travel

Red bunches of poetry
A few petals wither slowly
Replaced by hundreds overnight
Set the forest on fire
Not one that burns, but soothes
In spite of the spiteful heat
When the wind blows
Flowers magnify it and
Infuse it with an aroma
That takes you back
To long lost days
Memories of long ago
Of running among trees
Of weaving flower chains
Of summer skirts and ice
Of games that lasted hours
Of fancy flavored drinks
Of not a care under the sun

Red bunches of poetry
Upon the Gulmohar tree
The stuff that makes
Time Machines

The Stone Maiden

"What does God mean to you, Bijju?"

There was a light breeze that brought emphasis to the vastness of the space and to the two lone figures in the dark and deep night. The moon rested on its throne with a decided air of superiority and knowing.

Bijju turned away to peer into the distance. Even if there had been light, his eyes would not have caught much. He took a deep breath. "Child, aren't you cold?" There was dread and sadness in his voice that caught her, making her feel colder. "Do you want me to stop asking?" Bijju breathed in some more nippy night air, and pulled his shawl closer around his shriveled shoulders.

"Shree, I am old and senile. You are in the prime of your youth. You have seen so much of the world, you have traveled widely, you can't possibly believe that I can give you anything. I am nothing but a poor villager, cowherd and now old man on his death bed. Ask me about my cows or this village. These are things I know." She can't know. No one could have told her. I never wanted her to know.

Shree looked at him. He looked a hundred years older than the last time she had seen him, fifteen years ago.

She walked up to him and knelt in front of his chair. She took his bony fingers into hers and looked into his eyes. Dadaji, I am sorry that you repent so much. "Bijju, you are a very brave man." Dadaji, I wish I could have spent my childhood here with you. "You have lived here like king." I wish you had not let go of us. "Don't give up on your God like this."Don't give up on her.

He started on hearing the words. He heard what she had said and had understood what she had wanted to say. But she couldn't possibly have heard about that. Why would anyone tell her.

She had not wanted to see it, yet earlier that evening she had dragged herself to it. She had spent a few minutes almost choking at the sight of what she had thought of thousands of times in the last fifteen years.

Shree left the village before sunrise. As the bus hobbled away into the hills, she saw the golden orb rise above far off palms and coconut trees. Her questions of yesterday found their way into her notebook and the ideas in her head connected themselves and wove a tight web.

Bijju looked at the bus from his spot on the veranda. I drove your father away, child. I loved my 'God' more than my family. I spent myself on that stone. I carved the stone and the stone carved me. But your father, my son, hated that stone with all his heart and mind. The day he left our home, my God left that stone. My God doesn't exist there any more.

Bijju's mind went back to the unfinished statue that had remained untouched for fifteen long years. Bijju's longest years and his most unhappy. He had never spoken about the statue again for years. He had forced himself to stop thinking about it till the previous night when Shree had asked.

Bijju went back into his house. Lying on the table was a framed photograph of his son and his grand daughter. There was also a manuscript of her latest book.

He read the first page:

"For Dadaji and his unfinished sculpture. Your Life and Our God."

She had not addressed him as Dadaji. She had not asked about the statue. She had not asked him why he had let her go away. She had not blamed him and hated him.

Bijju had let his family leave him over a sculpture. A sculpture of a woman. He had loved the sculpture more than any woman. His family had hated the mystery woman and the stone more than who ever she was. He had labored over the stone with purpose and determination. No one could understand his love. No one understood his religion. When men of his age turned to pray to idols and pictures in a feeble attempt to have their sins overlooked, he had spent himself chiseling out the curves of a woman's body in stone. He had lived for that stone. Now, the stone maiden lay weathering in a field away from the village.

Bijju opened the book. He moved his fingers over the title. "The Stone Maiden". Tears rolled down his jagged cheeks. His God came back to haunt him. His religion beckoned him. That night Bijju returned to her with his chisel.