Transferred epithet

Space is a claustrophobic void
It kills yearnings
And yet I sit in a cube
When I am captured
By those paintings on the wall
They look at me
And find
What I mean to them…

Use contraceptives

Prevent Aids

The Alchemist- by Paulo Coelho

The book which has changed the life of millions through a simple yet striking magical story has become the favorite of many across the globe including me. Very few fables have the capacity to have some kind of mystic influence on your life through words that reach your soul and this book is surely one of them. The author Paulo Coelho indeed knows to convey his message to the world and motivate people to follow their dreams in a beautiful and an effective way. The story has some true hidden pearls of wisdom that has helped it achieve the status of a ‘modern classic’.

Though the story essentially edifies us about the basic understanding of listening to our hearts, what makes this book so striking is the distinctive style and weaving of words that have an everlasting dint on your hearts. This book makes us believe in destiny, destiny that you make for yourself. The book does not directly preach any didactic lessons of optimism; it rather inspires us to follow and tread on to the path of our thoughts and wills that we have laid for ourselves through stunning metaphors and striking symbolisms.

“When you really want something to happen, the whole universe conspires so that your wish comes true” This statement is the arabesque on which the entire book is decorated. It makes an individual believe in one-self and invigorates our faith in us. Coelho wants people to realize that it is in their hands to make the most of their life and that they should not become a prey to their own fate. The author also points out through the character of old crystal seller that those who do not have courage and are afraid of failure live a mediocre life full of emptiness and misery and that such people find comfort only in dreaming rather than putting an effort to fulfill their dreams…

The author uses imagery with such ease and comfort that the book almost takes you along the arid desert along with Santiago, the central character. Passion and ambition is a big part of his life that has inspired him to search for an extravagant treasure in Egypt. The book makes us see life through the passionate and eager eyes of Santiago who has the courage to sacrifice his life in order to fulfill his dreams. This is what I loved about the character because it inspired me to listen to my heart and understand what my existence is all about. It has taught me to be focused on what I want to achieve in life without worrying much about what other people have to think.

“Every second of your search is an encounter with God” This lines makes us believe that all of us have a road to follow, a mission to achieve, that has been made for us by God and that only few people walk on to search their destiny to experience that heavenly feeling, to know what it is to meet God. The symbolic use of ‘elixir of life’ and ‘philosopher’s stone’ for God is precisely done. It adds on to give the alchemy feel to the book. It is interesting to see that Coelho presents the person who denies following his dreams as the person who denies seeing God. It tells us about the strong faith that the author has in God.


With the meeting of characters Santiago and Fatima, the book instills our feeling and faith in love and it tells us that love it is the hub of subsistence and life. It tells us that love helps us to progress and gives us the strength to fulfill all our dreams. “I love you because the whole universe conspired for me to come close to you.” This is what Santiago says to Fatima in the book. Coelho’s writing indeed is beautifully poetic and soothes to ones senses.

The story indeed has the intensity to make us self- empowered, ambitious and motivates us to strive towards our goal in life. The best thing about the book is the challenge that it poses to the reader to follow the dreams in his/her life. The author’s simplicity of thoughts, the unusual setting, and underlying meanings in the book is what makes it an enjoyable reading experience. The reading of the feeling of fulfillment of ones aspirations is what makes this book so extraordinary. Truly, ‘The Alchemist’ has had a life enhancing impact on millions of people!

The last evening that she flew

She was sitting on the swing in her penthouse porch. Her habitual rolling of her curls through her fingers had not changed. The evening chirps and the commotion outside hardly came to her notice. She was lost in her own thoughts, in the web of contradictions of her very own life. The constant inner dilemma inside was depressing her to no ends. She knew she was slipping into the concaved world where she would soon be lost; never to find herself. She opened her closed fists and gazed on the Arabic design on her palms and her hands. She saw those neatly outlined flowers and motifs in auburns. She smiled. She smirked. She laughed. She was maniacally guffawing. It stopped after a while when she had enough of those suppressions of her emotions. She sat there; silent, without any expressions. She subdued the confusion of emotions within. Now she wanted to cry, cry out loud and she did, but that too did not suffice to make her feel fine. She herself did not know what was making her go through these dragon ride emotions. She had perhaps reached a state where she could not distinguish between so called being “happy” or “sad”. She had been tired of composing picture perfect fake smiles and affected behaviors. At times, she got so blank that there was a vacuum in her mind. Nothing could fill it up; absolutely nothing! There was no one to understand her stature because she found people very different to her. They comfortably lived in a world doing things so naturally that she strived to pretend. She was at sea. She kept swinging; gazing on to the sky aimlessly. Then suddenly she ran to the kitchen and searched for a knife at the impulsive thought to cut her nerves. The knife was right in her hands. She stood still and stared at her own nerves. She started laughing again; feeling pity on herself. She thought that this act too was being pretentious and was influenced from seeing movies. She hated to be predictable. And perhaps she thought it was not that she did not want to live. She very much wanted to live but live to the fullest, fulfilling her all weirdest fantasies that were scribbled in her diary. She wanted to talk to herself but she thought she suffered from aphasia. Though she did not have any physical injury; she suffered from mental illness; an illness which no one could cure except her. She wanted to live in some unknown, unseen, misty, hazy, foggy thoughts; thoughts that did neither have a start nor an end, thoughts that would come and go, thoughts that would make her feel free to think about anything that she wanted. Thoughts that had no connection and if laid on paper would form a haphazard design making no sense to anyone who sees it, except her. She somehow made sense of her nonsensical thoughts too and she loved doing it all the time.
She was staring at her curls again. She thought she too was entangled in the curls of life. A life where she would soon have to learn some big words of responsibilities, deference, obedience and what not…its not that she did not have these things in her but some oblivious facts of forced human life always scared her. Nothing was dearer to her than her freedom and from what she had seen in her twenty-five years of life, she sure had a phobia against losing it. It would actually make her go numb. She knew she was a misogamist- having hatred against marriage. She had never viewed matrimony as a heavenly thing to happen to two blissful souls. She felt marriage were synonyms to suppression, suffering and sorrows. Somehow these things were instilled engraved in her mind right from childhood. The fact that love too would be artificially generated using the biotechnology games of arrange marriage had scarred her mind. But then again she thought may be one would grow affectionate towards a person one stays with but she knew she would never really truly love the person in that forceful manner. Now she was frustrated of her own brains that could never stop thinking. She gazed the sky again. She so wished she could fly and roam and meander in this cosmos till her last breath!
It was the last evening she spent with herself coz the next day was going to be the grand day of her marriage!

Strange Affections

Yesterday, after working the whole day at my friend’s place on the second last project of my course (thank God for it being almost the second last one), I was on my way back home. I checked my watch. It was 9 pm. And I checked myself! I was dead tired. I was waiting at the station for the freaking train to arrive. As it did after due testing of my patience, I entered the second "second class ladies compartment" with some difficulty.
There are always these women in the train who think they are traveling in their private jet and thus they sit comfortably at the door blocking the way of all those who want to board in!! I was pretty annoyed at this as I entered but did not say anything as I never like to mess around with people of such great honor!!!! . There were a couple of empty seats in the train, but I always preferred standing near the door, listening to the music and enjoying the cool breeze as it hits you… Mind you I stand at the door but the moment a station arrives, I step back to let people enter and not behave as if I owned this moving property..... . But sadly this time my pleasure of enjoying the breeze was taken away for the obvious reasons!! I stood on the so called “second standing seat” inside the Mumbai trains. Soon I heard the cop acrimoniously shouting at the women near the door. These cops have their duty to be in the ladies compartments after 9. He was telling her to get up but she made the excuse of not being well and feeling puckish. She told the cop that she needed to sit there so that she could easily vomit out...... "Yuk!" my mind and my expressive eyes said....imagine what would happen if they were to actually fly in a jet! Where would they vomit…..never mind...I like keep getting these crazy thoughts… The cop too made a grumpy face on the woman’s bahana no. 47 (though innovative enough) and decided to let that women enjoy her "jet ride".
I looked at the cop who was standing diagonally opposite to me. My eyes went first on the name plate. It read "Vijay. Pra. Dhadke". It took me a while to read it, as it was written in Marathi. Then I looked at him. He must be in his forties. He was dark yet his features were simply adorable. There was this
” aggressive yet kind” look on his face which revealed his dual personality of being a ‘strict angry cop’ at the same time a ‘loving caring man’. For a moment I thought “What crap!! Why am I observing and analyzing no one but a cop!!!! Why am I doing his work?? Hehe!” But there was something about him that made me just look at him, think about him. He was not like other cops who merely stand there like titular heads! He seemed a cop who knew his duties and responsibilities very well. He was a “concerned cop “in the true sense of the term. I felt a deep sense of affinity towards him. There was an eruption of emotions in my heart. It occurs every time I get sentimental and foolish (both together). It would be very filmi to say but I felt as if I knew him since years. I felt like going and pulling his cheeks, calling him ‘my sweet uncle’ and talking to him. Amazed and abashed at my own feelings, thoughts and imagination I decided to abort this aberrant thought. (Hey that’s alliteration (all A’s)).

I started listening to the radio to divert my attention but it was an abortive attempt. As he was standing right opposite to me, it was impossible to not look at him. Just then my thoughts were disturbed by shouts of this young girl selling bindi packets. She was hardly seven-eight years old and was carrying a basket on top of her head which was full of these bindi packets. She was persuading each and every woman in the train to buy at least one packet but all her attempts were in vain… I was feeling sorry for her … The cop too was noticing that girl. (Vijay uncle- wish could call him that.). He summoned the girl. He asked her to show some bindi packets from the basket to him. It was very strange … I mean imagine a cop buying bindi packets!!!! I don’t mean that they can’t … but we have these stereo typical images of cops being this brave, strong, no non sense kind of attitude and all….. And here was my uncle (the cop)! Buying bindi packets for his wife…. How cute!!! He would surely be an ideal husband.
After he bought the packets, he saw me... Unable to hide my emotions I gave him this 360 degree smile trying to convey how much I appreciated his purchase for his wife… he smiled back at me. I liked that.
My home station soon arrived and I was all ready… geared up to jump out of the train (u jump out of the Mumbai trains… not alight!!!) I turned to see him the last time. His eyes gave me a blink and waved me a good bye. I smiled and got out…. Walking past the platform with a thoughtless brain and an emotion filled heart…………….
YES! My affections were strange but nonetheless they were pure and serene……..

Like a bygone era

Eons have passed
The mirror roared
Wrinkles appear
Eyes still gaze there

A picture lives everyday
It giggles, tickles and
Yet stands steady
On a frozen heart

The page flutters
As the wind blows
Tresses beckon
The waves of days gone

I cross my fingers
At the mail delivery vehicle
I fool myself
To believe in eyelash wishes

The straight road
Sometimes has no end
You turn around
And still there is no one

The taste of a tear

On a hungry road that I once strolled on
My swift blood stopped traveling
A tortuous swirl surpassed lungs and went beneath
Such can be the ability…
Of the sight and the scene
Of a lamp at a lousy corner
Whose mid-night shadow I saw that night
It replicated me in some act
And the pinched heart lay at my feet
I stood to be stable
To ponder and decide
Never to visit a monument twice
It will evoke the magma in you
And memories will haunt
When the mind will work and the feet will rest
Eyes see some dreams
And heart speaks some sotto voce words
About the night
When the moon hides behind the pillow
I opened my scrapbook
And gazed at those stuck coffee bills
I laughed at my nonage deeds
And cried over my emotions
I became a momentary bibelot
And persisted in my room
I looked quite decorative
Yet there was a hollow within…

The personified pitcher

I am a flimsy pitcher
Brimmed with water
And empty;
Yet again and again
Hollow and sunken
In the humdrum ride
The same muddy road
And a few drops trip
They fall with the call
Of the gravity
Of the society
Turbulence whirls in me
And yet the serene me
A metaphor of coolness
Empty once again
Filled; yet again
My blackout nights
And topsy-turvy me
Throttling for a breathe
And brimmed again
Along the morning sun
I live in extremities
And idyllic is non existent
That lad had given me a life
With those eyes and painted lips
He filled me like always
With fresh life
And I was yet snatched
And brimmed again…

With the fall of the night

The night brings its own sacked stories,
In the ear dropping silence of my cuboid
As I turn off the golden lamp shade,
The yellow light of the candle burns within
As I cover the black sheath of my eyes,
I discover some red colored semicircles…

Some scenes replicate in my mind,
Like that in the illustrated fable books,
I scribble the chats in the bubbles,
And paint the picture my way,
The saga of my secret dwell,
In the tale that I once lived in…

Nebulous metaphors of some years,
Are deeply penetrated within,
And as the darkness swells up,
The moist heart evokes them,
Like Butterfly pangs and pendulum strikes,
I flash back in the memento of time…

The dam built on my eyes breaks over,
As I swallow a lump in my throat,
My pillow does offer his shoulders,
But the snow melts from the peaks,
My heart sings the composed cantata,
As I try clearing the miasma within…

I ruminate the tale twice told,
And endure all the twinges within,
I try to macerate the fall of yellow leaves,
Only to hitch-hike to full moon nights!
Why the evil darkness baits me?
How long can I be my own ancillary?

What more can you do to a mind?
If it starts mingling over memories
With peculiar fragrances and sounds;
It goes back to the days of my glory
Burying memoirs; I keep myself inundated
But the abyss in me is never satiated …

In the pretext of helping to heal myself
I reach at the roots of my laminated soul
The place where I have masked myself
And got written in my annals ago
I now, live on with a phantasm inside
Passing silent days and sleepless nights…

Colours to wear

I
What color will you wear tonight?
The wardrobe questions their soul

Each mask you can conveniently put on
They will match with the color of your corset!

The jewels too shall harmonize;
With the tinge of red that you always carry

You can smoothen those garden walls with your talks
And enjoy the dive in the air you have blown

Oh! The yellows within sometimes evaporates…
Let the quick-fix purple patch be hemmed…

The colors will amend to suit your changing traits
The hues will darken to hide all your sinister parts


II
So many colors a day
Every time a new tint,
Every time a new shade

I wonder if they ever catch themselves;
While such games they play!

When will they be peeling off all these colors?
Or will they be fabricated;
To leave a stain on the heart?

Will remorse be disturbing them?
How will they be running away from it?

Probably a new brush to the old soul
Some painting in the exterior
And the deep hollow covered!

Facades and faces
Go along well it seems...!!

We sheathe ourselves so many times
With color masks to our convenience
That sometimes I wonder;
We ourselves do not realize who we are!

What a preposterous existence
So much unworthy of living!

Vagabond water

A nomad at heart,
With a peripatetic character,
Let me saunter,
Like the vagabond water.

Moor me not,
I am a rambling spirit.
Ephemeral bliss I offer,
In vistas I visit

I drink a little learning,
Dissolving the anodyne pills,
I do make a rainbow,
Not knowing what colors to fill.

Do not turn the faucet,
Trying to control my surges,
I will play the piano,
And strike the chords of my wishes.

I am like a kiosk,
My persona at display,
I narrate some anecdotes,
They come and go each day.

The phosphorous light in me,
Creates deep urges every night,
And I weep unto death,
Not knowing the reason behind…

Turmeric stains

Turmeric stains
Bleeding heart
Shaded memories
Of red laced charter

Herbal tea
Doldrums flee…

Eternal desires
Lost in fury
Pointing fingers
Moral character

Air conditioned mind
The room so blind…

Fascia; so divine
Bosoms to gaze
Loathingly lustful
Wandering in this maze…

Free bird above
Caged screen soul

Bookmark to follow
Pages to turn
Dried petals to keep
Foolish enough to weep

Starry night
Verbal fights

Curvy roads to tread on
Angular lives to live
Standard norms prescribed
Useless we; with a mind

The surreal dreams

I am surrounded by the repercussions of the havoc inside me
The grand picturesque of my vulnerable existence

I am lost in a crowd that gathers you
And the cloud nine dreams surround me

In the mind; I am wearing this bizarre tiara
And the shining aureole encircling me

The surreal reverie is taking on me
And the mind crowning me like a queen

I am smirking at my own foolish conjectures
And tapping my head to emphasis the veracity

Looking for my old corner that created fond memories
I am trying to nail myself and hang on that wall

I will camouflage inside the motif in that frame;
That hangs there; and be dangled unto death

I am slowly vanishing in an entangled swarm
Screaming to know myself from his eyes

I am excavating to find my lost bed
Giggling away to hide my falling tears

Yet I am grateful to my very own subconscious self
Which loses itself in reality and dreams to fulfill…

The Crisis of survival

(dedicated to so many farmers who have commited suicide)


His auburn soil
And yellow tractor
Rusty shovel
Digging harder

Tilling toiling
Dawn to dusk
Sowing seeds
Removing husks

Sprinkling water
Thirsty crops
Heavy breathes
Sun shining hot

His brow shined
Out of sweat
Folds on the head
Worry of debt

The anxious gaze
Up in the sky
The watery eyes
The fighting pride

The silent lunch
Under the shade
The puckish feeling
The unfair fate

The sundown journey
That strange smile
Strained legs
And the pain inside

That hazy night
He ploughed himself
Earth awaited,
But he never arrived