Author Archives: daakusaxena

You forgot your umbrella on the porch.

22 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in jinxed rhymes

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crumpled

Part I : The present of the past

It kept raining, the city seemed dead,
As lifeless as his songs.
Dark and gloomy as the place were,
There was a gentle knock on the door.

Apprehensive, tensed,
He opened the door,
And there she was,
The muse of his every song.

He had no idea on why she was,
Pinched himself,
twice on arms.
Elated, on a high,
he whistled a sigh.
With a voice he could hardly muster,
Ushered her inside.

She looked every bit the angel,
He had dreamt her to be,
The raindrops in her body,
Seemed an extension of what beauty could be.
The lips, the eyes,
The hair auburn,
The horizons revolved around her,
She,
She was the sun.

Part II : The past, past

The memories of yesteryear had always stayed,
Kept coming back to this day and if they may,
Took him back to a particular date and time,
It was difficult but he had looked her in the eye,
Expressed his love,
His anguish,
And promises of a life they’d together sail by.

But their moment had passed,
Love, for them,
Could have never last.
She was the one sensible,
Knew it all before,
Kissed him on the cheek,
And left silently as the white she wore.

Part III : The present of the past, Part II

He offered her a drink,
And she politely declined.
Sat beside him,
They began to talk life.

They both had grown,
In their time apart,
Fair share of memories,
They both knew how they last.

He felt something on his face in sometime,
It was aching,
He had smiled for this this long after a long long time.
The realization kicked in on what he had lost,
A tear sprout out,
Made his eyes its home.

He couldn’t look up for a while,
And then he looked her in her eyes,
They were a reflection of what he felt,
And they knew,
A connection was made.

They made love,
And it was tender,
Slow and soft,
He wanted to let the moment last forever.

A part of him knew that it were a dream,
She would not be there if he opened his eyes.
But for now, one could wish for nothing else.
He was smiling as he drifted off to sleep,
Watching in peace how her breasts moved,
While she breathed.

Part IV : The present

One day,
Maybe he’ll love again.

One day,
Maybe he’ll feel again.

Why does he cry?
He still hasn’t lost it all.
But the voice inside,
It haunts.

It curses, it yells,
It blames him for the mistakes he never made.
He drowned himself in whiskey to make it go away,
Killing himself, his conscience,
Memories of yesterday.

One day,
Maybe he’ll live again.

One day,
Maybe he’ll dance again.

She was his to own,
His to caress.
She was the sun,
The moon,
The flower which made him bloom.

He never wants to, but he remembers the kiss,
The goodbye that wasn’t,
She had left him while he was asleep.

He kept thinking that it was a dream,
Happily forgetting,
The life could be so clean.

He had made himself believe that it never happened,
The night wasn’t what it once seemed.
Must be a product of the hallucinations which come around,
But
But.
She forgot her umbrella on the porch.

Breathe

11 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by in jinxed rhymes

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wall-scream

I slip away from consciousness
And I see,
There’s an albatross around my neck,
As I try to breathe.

The mistakes of a life past by,
Come crashing though my open eyes.
I wish I had a little more time,
To be.

I know I hurt you sister
going away to this foreign land,
I will try to meet again
If I can

If I don’t,
know I love you
as much as I always have,
if I could turn around now,
you know I would.

Do tell father
it’s alright,
People live and people die,
Visit him sometimes in his dreams,
I will.

I have been to places
And I have seen a million things,
There’s someone in my head,
But that’s not me.

Forgive me mother,
This is the last breath I’ll breathe.

Image: The wall. Floyd.

A pack of paper cards

04 Thursday Apr 2013

Posted by in jinxed rhymes

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It doesn’t take much,
To get the tears flow again.
A memory rekindled,
A trick of the brain.
A forgotten spark,
A distant past,
All flash by as they fall,
Like a pack of paper cards.

No one knows about,
What happened at the time.
It lay deep down,
Somewhere in the contours of the mind.
Even I had forgotten that it ever occurred,
You see, I was very young.
It were an uncle,
A friendly familiar face.
I still cannot get what made him,
Unzip his pants on my face.
I believe I had run,
But somewhere deep down,
The damage was done.

Years have passed and I have grown,
I have had my share of highs and lows.
My first girlfriend broke up over a phone call,
I made it a point that the second would be double as hot!
Don’t judge me, I was young,
And once I did commit the fallacy of falling in love.
She took my heart, cajoled, caressed it,
And then broke it to pieces.
I survived and still stand,
Everything has played a part becoming who I am.

But I still fear strangers,
Still am confined,
Feeling all around me,
Though unable to mutter a sigh.
It takes a lot to get out of the shell,
A comfort zone,
Define it as you may.

I do want to meet that man,
Who in a moment of lusty madness could have destroyed this particular boy.
I want to show what the boy grew into,
And how can he be never half the man.

And I wish it never had happened,
I wish I could erase.
Crumble down the memory,
Make it fall,
Like air does,
To a pack of paper cards.

The Beautiful Game

21 Thursday Mar 2013

Posted by in bark!

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rooney

Football.
Noun. A game played by two teams of 11 players each on a rectangular, 100-yard-long field with goal lines and goal posts at either end, the object being to gain possession of the ball and advance it in running or passing plays across the opponent’s goal line or kick it through the air between the opponent’s goal posts.
Etymology. Foot plus ball.
Followers. 28.7 mil on Twitter. Countless besides.

Football has never been just a game; with a larger than life status and many a billion fanatics. FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) is one of the richest sport bodies of the world. UEFA Champions league, the Euros and The World Cup are the richest sporting events in the world, with the winner of the Champions league winning $77 mil (ICC World Cup offers a prize of $4 mil). The FIFA World Cup in Germany (2006) was viewed in over 214 countries with an unbelievable total of 26.29 billion views.

In the corporate scheme of things, the game is sure to be followed by the giants – AON has seen its popularity soar after associating itself with Manchester United, and Nike is the most visible sports brand. But what I want to discuss upon is what the game means to us lesser mortals and how are we enticed by the sheer brilliance of the beautiful game.

Like all the other kids of my age, I used to be a cricket buff. And one fine day I saw this absolutely fabulous man who could curl the ball anyway he felt like with his sheer will. That was 2001-02 and he got England through to the World Cup single handedly. That was how I started with Manchester United, and I fell in love. Scholesy, Giggs, Keane, Beckham became my idols and I remember that I cried when Beckham left for Madrid. But it taught me that no man is bigger than the club he plays for, and as I grew up this feeling has stayed, accepting everything good there is with humility. I read about the Munich disaster, the lives of the club legends and somehow I felt connected with the club – they became my identity. I wanted to follow them, emulate them; I learnt never to give up even when defeat was staring right at my face, I learnt to fight even in the most adverse of times.

The era of Ronaldo started with the 2003-04 season and he achieved what the Old Trafford faithful had deemed impossible – he made us forget the hurt of losing Beckham. Rooney burst to the scene and the Theatre of Dreams looked the most exciting place to be in.

People often ask me if I follow Manchester United for their trophies or because of their popularity, among others. As one of my friends had put it, and it fits in so perfectly – Manchester United is a way of letting myself free, letting my passion for football grow as well as helping me grow as a person. I am not saying that people who support other clubs are on the losing side. That is the most important lesson football has taught me – respect. I do not like Chelsea, but I respect them. I like the brash nature of Madrid football club over the tiki-taka of Barcelona football, but never will I not agree that they are a great footballing club and the world would be so much worse without them.

I love the beautiful game for all these reasons and countless more, and how the sight of a football makes my eyes glitter like that of a child’s who has a chocolate bar in front of him. At that point of time, nothing else matters. There are two posts, and a man guarding it. At the time, the only thing that’s there in the world is getting the ball past him. This is what there is, this is what matters. This is you, this is the game, this is your life.

Come, step forward. Let’s change the world

31 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in jinxed rhymes

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Come, give me a hand,
Let’s string down a couple of words,
Let us start with one brand new verse.

Come, show me how,
I need memories,
Of them am without.
Teach me how to dance,
To let flow the letters of love,
Drown in the beauty that’s around.

Come, let us walk,
We’ll plant a few trees,
And we’ll walk in their shade,
If a day as fine could come to that.
We’ll run, we’ll play,
We’ll be the children we could never may.
And when night comes,
We’ll run for cover,
In a parallel universe,
We’ve made for each other.

Come, give me a hand,
Let’s string a melody,
Come,
Together, we’ll write a brand new song.

Mother

11 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by in jinxed rhymes

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mother

“Once upon a time..
in a kingdom far, far away..
there lived a young girl
whose hair was made of gold.
When the people
in the village saw her, they said

“Oh, how beautiful she is.”

But the people in the village
were very poor.
and every night, they crept
into the house where the girl slept.
and they cut off a piece
of her golden hair.
and they sold it for money.

“She’ll never even notice,”
they said.

And so, all the gold
was gone from her head.

And the people said.
‘Oh, she’s not beautiful at all.’

And they took her from
the beautiful house.
and they drove her
into the street.
And she went away.
and she never came back.

And soon,
people became hungry again.
and they went back into
the beautiful house.
Looking for gold,
but there was no one there.”

She wept, and here’s what she tried to say. All the time, all the years. If only one could listen, if only one could hear.

feast on my wine,
should i thank you for company?

have all the food i saved,
if not you, there’ll be other predators.

come to my house,
teach me the way to live,
take the jewels,
if you think they suit you better.

drink the water to quench your thirst,
bathe yourself, cleanse, there’s plenty out here.
carry on the charade as long as you want,
you’re not the first,
nor you’ll be the last.

i am weary,
i am tired.
waiting for a savior,
an unfulfilled desire.

don’t let my words mock you,
no, you are my child,
likewise, i shall always treat you,
carry on, you, like the ones have before.

sing your songs of merriment aloud,
strip me naked and call me lucky.

(The girl, the mother, her name – India)

For we’ll forget her before we know it

20 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by in bark!

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“Sometimes I wonder… will God ever forgive us for what we’ve done to each other? Then I look around and I realize… God left this place a long time ago.” – Blood Diamond.

But that was Africa, right? This is India, a place where the Gods reside. The crown of Himalayas and the Kashmir valley, dubbed as “paradise on earth”. You go to the southernmost corners, you reach Kerala- and it is termed as God’s own country. We have a billion people and a million Gods; they would never desert us, will they? I mean, how many more layers of lies one must walk through to look at the truth. We are happy being the ignorant buffoons we always have been. Have we learnt nothing from our history?

Whenever something happens, we light candles. Don’t get me wrong, I am not being sarcastic. We support the person who has been wronged in ALL the way we can – we post the rubbish on our Facebook walls, we tweet how entirely wrong this whole episode is – whatever it may, we write blogs, we even go out of our way and do a candle march. And we go with placards and all. We leave no stone unturned. We did it in the case of that minor girl, that Guwahati girl, and now we’ll do it for the Delhi girl too. We CARE ! We fucking do, damnit !
There’s only one thing I fail to understand. Who are we trying to prove that we care? If we did, the shameful episodes wouldn’t have happened. If we did care, Jane would be living her regular life. If we did care, Joe wouldn’t have been beaten dead in the middle of the street.
But we can always write more posts, go on some more candle marches, right?

I remember this incident when a mother of two was raped in Park Street and her majesty’s statements to the gory deed. She said that rape cases are on a rise in the country because men and women interact with each other more freely now. “Earlier if men and women would hold hands, they would get caught by parents and reprimanded but now everything is so open. It’s like an open market with open options.”
An open market with open options !
(http://ibnlive.in.com/news/rapes-happening-because-men-and-women-are-interacting-more-freely-says-mamata-banerjee/300585-37-64.html)

Now, let’s come to Delhi. A senior police officer’s amazing advice on the recent matter of gang rape on a moving bus– “advising women to avoid rape by not travelling after dark and carrying chilli powder to throw at potential attackers.”

Now, let’s look at the answers given by the police on if rape is a crime. It is from a sting operation by NDTV.
“She asked for it.
It’s all about money.
They have made it a business.
It is consensual most of the time.”
You can read more on it – http://www.ndtv.com/article/india/in-and-around-delhi-cops-blame-rapes-on-women-tehelka-investigation-with-ndtv-194735

So, we have incompetent politicians, bloody buffoons for police officers and the living dead as citizens- who could never peep outside their window even when they know that you are being dragged by the cuff of your neck, maybe to be plundered. But that must be the dog barking, I should turn on the volume of the television a little more, just so, that’s perfect!

So guys, stop posting stuff. Stop hiding. Take charge. I am not asking you not to look at girls, but when you do, do it with respect. They are to be adored, they are to be admired. Media will always find a new case to show 24X7- it likes to feed on others’ misery. The news has remained grim for as long as I can remember, only with changing subjects. Your life is not a news channel. Help people. When elections come, go to vote. You are educated enough to choose the right person, regardless of the caste and the creed. And above all, respect others and their right to live, it’s not that difficult. In the end, it might make all the difference in the world.

Two Songs.

17 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by in jinxed rhymes, Uncategorized

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This is an experiment of two songs, one by Floyd (Nobody Home) and the other Porcupine Tree (Lazarus). The rights of the songs reside with the respective geniuses.

And this is not a dialogue. Imagine the two protagonists sitting in two different corners, trying to communicate, sort it all out, knowing that all is but lost. Here’s how it goes.

He:

“I’ve got a little black book with my poems in.
Got a bag with a toothbrush and a comb in.
When I’m a good dog, they sometimes throw me a bone in.

And I know
When I try to get through
On the telephone to you
There’ll be nobody home.”

She:
“My David don’t you worry
This cold world is not for you
So rest your head upon me
I have strength to carry you”

He:
“I’ve got nicotine stains on my fingers.
I’ve got a silver spoon on a chain.
I’ve got a grand piano to prop up my mortal remains.

I’ve got wild staring eyes.
And I’ve got a strong urge to fly.
But I got nowhere to fly to.

When I pick up the phone,
There’s still nobody home.”

She:
“My David don’t you worry
This cold world is not for you
So rest your head upon me
I have strength to carry you.

Follow me down to the valley below
You know
Moonlight is bleeding from out of your soul
Come to us, Lazarus,
It’s time for you to go”

Jeremy

13 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by in attempted muse, bark!

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Words are still lost, meanings still declined. The realities shift, they change. I am thankful that the dreams are still my own. They sold my soul, they took my name but the mask still hangs on to the face. Over the years, it has changed- a Rorschach of black blobs. It is the only color that has fascinated me since the very start. I have seen kids playing- arguing over the best color which is there but black never figured on their list. Maybe because it isn’t a true color after all, it is their absence. But it reaches where even light falls short.
This color has very conflicting connotations. None of the colors has so many different meanings, and so many opposed ideas. On one hand, black is the color of death, and on the other, it represents individuality. If black represents fear and darkness, it can be mysterious and sophisticated. It is authority and also humility, the sin and the holiness, rebellion and conformity, wealth and poverty, good and bad. But trust me, when I see black, I always see the dark side.
Maybe that is why I always try to hold back my tears. They might smear the mask, if light falls, the colorless drops of water might become a rainbow. The red of love, the blue of pride, the green of peace. If light doesn’t befall, it still is white- the color of hope. Hope is costly. I know, I’ve tread on its vestiges.
Nostalgia defines, memories, they bind. I drain them every single day, but the next morning they return. I try to fight them, the daemons, but they I can see them growing stronger. I can feel them, can sense them and have I tried defeating them. But it’s getting harder. The night is getting colder.
It’s getting dark, too dark to see.

the end.

08 Saturday Dec 2012

Posted by in attempted muse

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i walk for miles. i see no sign. the walls are filled with drawings. caricatures they lie sprawling in the dust. the road is long. there are many paths but i choose the one that leads straight.

along the way i see flashes of my past. i stumble my way out of the scary ones, the ones that haunt me still making me shiver – the daemons of my past. it is a test. you have to cross the ring of fire and not be afraid. don’t fear, and walk. walk through the bad and then, only then you will reach the part where the happy ones reside. now this is the tricky part. for you don’t want to leave the happy memories behind. i forgot that and i was stuck. for three days and three nights i kept wandering down the lane, living each of the happy times, again. i looked at myself, and i realized, that my present was being eaten down by these memories of the past, and i had to escape. i ran, i ran hard, afraid, down by the fear that my past was going to eat down my present.

i reached the end of the path. there was a road. the road i saw each day in my dreams, the passage to safety- from my inhibitions, from my fears. the shadows invite me, to the promises of yesterday, the images of what could have been but never happened. i look for company, i realize that i am alone. i always thought that i have been alone, but never lonely. the realizations hit me hard. they saddened me, i break down, i cry.

i pray, for a hand, for i couldn’t walk down that passage alone. fatigued, i sit down. i fall asleep, i dream.

i walk for miles. i see no sign. the walls are filled with drawings…..