My heart beats Excitement thrums It’s a different world Here I come!
I tell myself It will be different this time But immediately, Strobe lights Frazzle my eyes While DJ Dread Drum bleats And music drowns beneath; Encore breeds even more cacophony.
Malarkey’s depths barely let My words break furore, Regardless, Every answering breath Liquors mine unbearably more.
Still I smile Still I groove Be only as verbose As it behooves
But no-one really Sees through it all, With bloodshot windows Shuttering against soul
Lonely bodies Seek pick-me-ups, Busy bodies Sell forget-me-knots, Oblivion is a headiness; It calls, enthralls
Throngs fall in deep I too want to Desperately see the appeal But, I’m thoroughly appalled. Did I age too quickly? Was I born too late? Why do I feel so old? I try not to wonder at all
And though my ears bleed And head spins My heart still beats, Evermore, Staccato fatigued, Eyes bruised, Feet sore.
The comforts of hedonism Discombobulate And the consequences Render rather insensate, Then, Nursing solitude And an arrogant disdain, I sit aside, And contemplate.
A teaspoon of philosophy melds with a tablespoon of reality in my mind’s eye, That the tendrils of time, sitting upon my tongue, daub insistently on my smile
Ink stains blue my finger tips Calloused by their genteel labors Upon the grays of black-and-whites As the minutes turn into hours
Them faceless thus dance, endlessly Their silent music greeting all ears While the sightless, deafeningly, Dip the brush in a sea of tears
Garbled hues then mottle my world That stands still to the vagaries of time Moments, both terrible and terrific, Burn brightly and gently die.
I like to think I am like a pendulum; I am wont to seesaw Between A very high opinion Of myself And a critically flawed One
Yet unlike the pendulum This wont is an artist’s science – Abstract rhythm Immeasurable rhyme It ebbs and flows Like a musician’s score, Its intensity oft rendering Thinking a chore, And in this state my Subconscious Still battles with indecision; A furious yet subliminal exercise Both, a virtue and a vice That’s crept up in my sinews Contracting, expanding, In sweet delirium (Quite unlike alcohol) Therefore, And Apparently, This makes it good for the soul, Like, Chicken soup! Drinking in incredible stories – An oblivious escape A deliberate distraction A tragic twist An inspiring action –
Each oscillation thusly stokes The storyteller’s Imagination And, don’t we have them all? Stories to tell Stories to live Even as we’re grasping At the straws We push through And pull rabbits Out of our ordinary tales – Veritable magicians we are With bewilderingly bewitching brains That delude themselves To swing Between Self love And loathing
It scrapes across the fingertips And digs ‘neath the roughshod nails Before it eases into night And the hardships gently wane And ebb and flow with tendresse Of each, now habitual, caress That kneads the creases and furrows away
The day Like embroidery Is fine
It scrapes across the fingertips It digs ‘neath the roughshod nails Benign, as a child’s gaze, It draws blood – It plucks each drop And hurls into the design Of Drowning suns And Ruby skies
The drops pool The wounds cool The day rests into night The rains glaze over the reds That macabrely coalesce Along the hardened lines
But if the fault Were upturned The rains would gently graze the reds And ebb and flow with tendresse Of each, now habitual, caress That kneads the creases and furrows away
Then the day Unbeguiled Like embroidery Would also smile
It’s been years since graduation
I measure that time and distance
In values
That paved our way
In beliefs
That kept us walking
In attitude
That set the rhythm to our gait
And in fortitude
That carried us across
Because
The knowledge we then
Naively gauged us in
When faded away,
The wisdom
Wisely remained –
In the wordplay
During interactions
And the unintended wit
In the reactions –
Their impressions
Gained
In girth and momentum
So while it’s been years since graduation
I measure that space in memories
Too priceless to put a tag to –
Even words are not enough
To express my gratitude
Browning leaves lay strewn on the forest floor in a fair imitation of a kaleidoscope. The barren trees with spindly trunks were mourning their loss. Their silence was deafening; occasionally broken by flocks of birds chirping through the dawn, a cacophony of insects serenading through the night and the gently flowing waters of the creek.
I remember this day like yesterday. She must have been thirty-five when I clicked this picture. We were on the outskirts of the forest a few blocks away from our house. It was the first picture I deemed acceptable for entering into a photography contest. She had insisted on calling it “The Hollow”. At that time, I never understood why.
Since yesterday, I’ve been going through a lifetime of memories she left me with in her scabby old trunk. Of all the pictures in it, my eyes can’t seem to part with this one. It looks hazy now, and feels wet. I wipe it with shaky hands. It hurts; it shouldn’t, but it does. It is not so much that she is dead but the fact that she died without recalling me. It’s been five years since she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
Says the spider to the fly,
“Always, always I snugly lie
In my web of truths
And now I’ve caught you too”
The fly, in kind, replies,
“I’ll find an escape route”
But on the sly, the spider laughs
“Oh you’re well and truly caught
No reason to deny
None of your elaborate plots
That run afoot
Can help you seek the way to lie”
The fly, however, self-assured
Wills the spider to watch
As it tells the truths from lies
Pakistan. May 2, 2011. Militant Islamist Osama bin Laden was killed by the U.S. forces, ending his reign of terror:
A drizzle of blood
From the skies burst
Touched his lips
And quenched his thirst
And as innocent blood
Wet his throat
He inspired men
With hate and loath
His bombs, missiles and gun barrels
Vanished cities with a blast
And the eyes of each city shone
With the ghosts of its past
Each man, each woman,
Each child of every faith
Vowed to strike back
And avenge their death
And at last as though heavens raged
In silence with interminable zest
In secrecy they sent him where
No man in peace does ever rest
Is this the emotion that oozes?
When you hear his name
Forgetting latent virtues
In sheer disdain
How many of you agree to that
Upon which the poem insists
I may, I may not, but
Isn’t there a heart in every terrorist?
They say probably not
Bin Laden’s death was a landmark; a symbolic slap on the face of terror that boosted the morale of people. It was supposed to be a harbinger of hope.
But the power vacuum
Lead the Middle East
Into a state of
War and Insurgency
The chasm between
The two factions of Islam
Fueled by jihadists
Gave rise to a political bedlam
The ISIS then emerged
In Iraq and Syria
Wishing to establish
A governance by Sharia
The resulting civil war
Scarred the Syrian nation
Destabilized Middle East
And invaded global regions
Now as the US and its allies
Launched airstrikes at ISIS
Syria became inhospitable
Resulting in a migrant crisis
It is the year 2016 now. This is the story of a how, a Syrian refugee who lost his family while migrating to Europe, meets another refugee settled in Germany in a similar situation
It’s those some-times
When in the quintessential hush
You whisper
From a broken raspy throat
Crackling through the silence
As though parched and raked over
Burning coals, over
Scorching summer sands
And into those silences of the desert
Your agonizing cracked voice
That has been silenced
By fate perchance
For so long
It has so much to say
It longs to, but nay
The silence of the desert
Offers no solace, no oasis
Yet you whisper
It speaks of strength
That you’re so hardened
That only you know, it’s an illusion;
Where they see courage
I see the desperation
I see you’re broken
Because I’ve been there too
The ageless quietude
Of whispering
Of wetting the throat with emotions
Buried somewhere far but not forgotten
Of wetting chapped lips with blood
That you wished was not a figment
Of your imagination
You bleed within and wonder
Why it all never bleeds out
But like a rot on the inside
It gnaws at you, it clings on, it clots
And you scrape it out
With harsh rasping sounds
And guttural cries and howls
Your throat is hoarse
Because you have so much to say
But no one to tell
So you tell the silent air
The forbidden secrets you hope
It will share
You hope that one day
You’ll get there
I won’t lie and say it’ll be fine
But it will get better with time
Your lies, your self-deception
Your ability to hide the pain
To hide yourself
From not just the world
But from yourself
We wish to say something to those refugees. To tell them that there is hope. That they have people out there who wish to help them.
But at the end of the day,
We are spectators; indifferent
Sympathizers; still indifferent
Commoners; who aren’t directly affected by ISIS or the migrant crisis
As an extension to Happy New Year, a friend of mine told me earlier this morning that he makes resolutions when needed, not when the calendar on the wall changes. That perfectly describes my sentiments. However, this New Year I received a greeting from another dear friend apologising for all her past actions and words that may have even inadvertently hurt me. That gave me a pause. It gave me the idea for my latest resolution, which coincidentally happens to coincide with the first of January.
Every individual reacts differently to a given stimulus. Communication in a common tongue aims to reduce the scope of misunderstandings within these reactions. However, our unique styles and perspectives on life disable this particular feature resulting in a wall that stops us from being able to adopt a foreign mindset that justifies a particular action or reaction.
In this light, my resolution is to simply try and breach the wall by translating it through poetry. As an example here is a parody on the mental tyranny of social obligations:
LESS IS MORE
I suppose it may differ
Mine from yours
As do I from you
But nevertheless for me
It’s true
My dear –
Oh bother
I really must start appending
‘friend’
At the end
Of every ‘my dear’
For I fear
That such affectation
May be taken
Under undue consideration
By one
Who may or may not
Have been
Mocked
As the talk
Progressed into
The emphatic
But thence
Unto
The static
I adore cooking. Mostly cooking up things. Sometimes it’s food. Palatable, usually. Here’s one of my many wacky dishes.
RICE ‘N’ CHIPS
Doritos crumbled into rice swathed in egg mayonnaise seasoned with a thousand islands and sprinkled with grated cheese and red chilli
because there is poetry in food … and food for thought
You know you’re in University
When your taste buds have worn out
With the bland and the boring
And the numbingly unalluring
“Things” to eat
And you know when you’ve crunched
On supermarket candies and cookies
For days, mayhaps even weeks
Because winters have come
With blanket retreats
You know you’ve truly forgotten
How the good food melts like
On your tongue
For to walk a mile
(Or what seems like one during exams)
Is a real problem
But when your stomach starts wheezing
And your bread is hosting fungus
Oh your jam’s got it too
You walk that mile (despite a humongous workload)
But your options are too few
So you don’t even take the road
Less travelled by
But get off of the fork
You wade through the forest
And pick that what might just work
Politics is messed up and in return, I am lousy at it. It is a veryhealthy relationship I assure you; of being uninterested, apathetic, uncaring, and indifferent and all the synonyms you can find in the thesaurus for the word “voter”. Do note that the word ‘voter’, here, not only refers to those who vote but also those who can but prefer not to.
And I appreciate the voters who don’t vote. After all, they must have more pressing concerns such as working to put food on the table. They have no reason to care about which candidate gets elected or what schemes he proposes. Those schemes are never going to bear them fruits. But yes, if they must, they would rather vote for the candidate that delivers promises before the elections even begin. After all, he ‘shows’ promise despite his track record. Now, while most cultures may call this ‘bribery’ and condemn it for being a despicable act, the truth remains that nobody would admit but everybody is guilty of it. And that makes the whole world which includes those who vote and those who don’t equally and unequivocally a despicable lot. Since everybody is born this way, no-one is alone in being lazy and dishonest. Thus, without shame I can confess to you, one voter to another, I’m one who’d rather not vote.
THE UNVARNISHED TRUTH BEHIND AN ELECTION MANIFESTO
I will get up
And wash about
Me, my house
I will drink
To the health
Of me, my house
I will eat
To fill the tums
Of me, my house
I will work
Hard to earn
For me, my house
Day after tomorrow
I will do all I can
For me, my house
Tomorrow I will plan
The how-to-do
For me, my house
And I will want today
Your support
For me, my house
For what is mine
Is yours too
Even me, my house
And together
We sink or swim
That is our house
Coz ‘everyday’ comes
But the day after ‘tomorrow’
In this blessed house
However, I vote. Despite the fact that the higher echelons of the society are infested with petty politics of a silver tongued governance riddled with corruption, I vote. After all, the media has spiced it up into a soap opera, irresistible even to the likes of me. And I absolutely despise it; a love-hate relationship. Moreover, I want to feel like Santa Claus. I want to know which candidate has been good and deserves a gift. It gives me a perverse guilty pleasure to note that no politician deserves it. Still I vote; partly because I am inclined to put up the pretense of a nice active voter who cares and partly because if I am to give up my nation to vultures I’d rather choose the least greedy one. So yes, while I am lousy at politics and would rather not dirty my hands with it, I refuse to sit on the sidelines and accelerate the rot. Who knows? Once in a blue moon, the tide may change and long-sought changes may be wrought.
BIRDS OF A FEATHER
Look at those giant feathery folks
That poke their beaks into businesses
That bother them not
And rather than lay an apology
Thickly and swift
Their tongues erupt into
Hackneyed discourses and juvenile diatribes
That fail to eclipse their wilted wit
So much so that these long weathered ears
Grow wary of potential permanent abuse
Especially as their voices grow louder
And their stilted stature elevates
Mayhap it’s their nearness
But as their beaks elongate
I wonder how many of us
Are blind by choice
And how many oblivious
But it is quite certain that the giants seem
(Beyond their bulbous beaks)
Unable to see
Or care about
Our apathetic visage
And a pathetic state of affairs
~ Akanksha Gupta
(PS: This article was published in HKUST Wings 23.1)
Do you know why we have so many matrimonial services? Because it is difficult to find the perfect life partner. Everyone has a different nature and nurture, and therefore, a very different view of what a ideal being is. Furthermore, their perceptions keep evolving with time.
For instance, in the 17th Century, the society defined a perfect, accomplished woman as one well-versed in a variety of homely arts and social etiquette (Sense the sensibilities of Pride and Prejudice here?). Had the society remained constant in its views of a perfect women, we would still be afflicted with gender roles today. The world would have made no progress.
Take another example. If we had believed that the first phones invented were absolutely flawless, we would have never made smart phones. We would have not invented beyond a certain creative threshold.
That is why it is said that “Forget perfection. There is a crack in everything. That is what lets the light get in.” In other words, we can always find potential for improvisation in every sphere.
However, let us assume for a moment that it is indeed possible to achieve perfection. To begin with, is there any universally agreed upon definition of what that may entail? Your version of perfection may very well be flawed to me. Perfection, therefore, lies in the eyes of the beholder.
The only perfect persona we can achieve is the one that we conceive. For that, we keep on improving and changing for the better. In other words, we strive to be more perfect than before. And herein lies the irony of trying to be perfect but not having the ability to become so.
In short, while nobody is perfect, everyone has the ability to overcome any imperfections in the constant endeavor for self-development where sky is the limit.
Fantine is alive not just in our memory, but in reality as well. There are many Fantines. Every person has the potential to become a Fantine. What are we doing to ourselves?
Anne Hathaway’s touching performance of “I dreamed a dream” as Fantine in ‘Les Misérables’ will remain burnt into our hearts through time. It was the raw emotion that dripped from her voice, the pain of her trials that echoed in our ears and the portrayal of her life that singed our hearts. But the silence that lay heavy in the air then, continues now. Its essence has permeated; bred through time and broken the shackles made by the blood and sweat of all those who tried to keep the monster at bay. The shackles had always been feeble anyways. And so, that silence that haunted Fantine still hangs like an albatross around the neck of the society.
We see cases of domestic abuse, molestation, rape and so on fill the pages of the newspaper. It chills us to the bones. For a moment we are skeptical of what remains of humanity in this world. We wonder why our society makes monsters of good men. Well, there are a number of different theories.
Some argue that it is conditional behavior. Those men observe that most of the crimes (at the rate of one molestation every 15 minutes; one crime against women every 3 minutes; one dowry death every 77 minutes; one rape every 29 minutes; one murder every 16 minutes; and one sexual harassment case every 53 minutes) go unpunished, and instead, the victim is blamed. They deem it acceptable in their mind.
But here, we wonder whether they have any discretion, any rational thought to counter it. Well, that thought is perhaps trampled by what they are taught to practice; subtle gender inequalities that over time begin to seem commonplace to both genders. It gradually becomes a part of their culture. It transforms their mindsets into that of the oppressed and the oppressor. For instance, in 2004, the NHFS reported that at least 35% of the women being abused thought that they deserved a brutal beating from their husbands if they neglected the household chores or children, while 51% of such husbands also deemed beating their wives acceptable if they disrespected the in-laws. It is no wonder that according to a UN report, 6 out of 10 men in India commit domestic violence.
Here are some more unsurprising statistics about the attitude towards gender equality in India (published jointly by United Nations World Population Fund (UNFPA) and Washington-based International Center for Research on Women):
93.6% men believe that a woman should obey her husband
86.2% men believe that the most important role of a woman is to take care of the home and cook for her family, against 74% women who said the same.
74.6% men and 65.1% women believed that if a woman does not physically fight back, it is not rape.
93% men felt that ‘to be a man, you need to be tough’ compared to 85% women.
Look closely at the 4th finding mentioned above. It shows how both the oppressed and the oppressor are in fact oppressed and shackled by the parochialism of a society that unknowingly perpetuates the aforementioned inequalities. The quintessential male is limited to a gender role defined by high aggression, independence and an unemotional countenance. This is one of the main factors for a higher rate of suicide among men than among women, since it prevents men from seeking counselling against depression. Gender roles indeed play a major part in the increasing incidence of related crimes.
But not all women or men are the quiet martyrs of yesterday. The Fantines of today are trying to break the silence. One out of every four Fantines in India is speaking out against the atrocities. Can you hear their voices?
I can, and I tried to capture the story of one of them in the following video. And while these modern-day Fantines are slightly different from Hathaway’s Fantine, the similarities in their circumstances are heart-rending, as is the fact that they still exist.
I hope that we begin this new year with the hope to bring about a change and make this world a better place to live in.
In this light, my resolution is to simply try and breach the wall by translating it through poetry. As an example here is a parody on the mental tyranny of social obligations:
The Pluming PoeTree 
