23rd June, 2014

Haan, phir bhi baatein kabhi toh hoti hi thi,
Par baaton mein se jaan kahiin gumshuda thi.

Yaadein, toh aise yaad aate hain (28th May 2014)

किसी अंजान शहर की कोई गुमनाम गली के

बगल में ठहरा एक अंधेरे मकान में 

एक बूढ़े इंसान के मुर्झाते साये में

खेलते दो बच्चों के किल्काडियों को सुन

दादाजी के शॉल की खुशबू, या फिर

छज्जे पर नींबू-शरबत पीने के वह

सांझे का ढलता सूरज याद आता है, 

यादें तो ऐसे याद आते है… 

किसी नये दोस्त के आवाज़ के सिलवटों में

तीसरी क्लास का बेंच वाला साथी,

और restaurant में नज़दीक के टेबल पर बैठा 

अजनबी की आँखों में, ग्यारहवी का 

वह प्यार याद आता है, और रंगीन 

एक शाम की मदमस्त जवानी में 

एक birthday के शाम का शोरगुल, माँ की आवाज़,

और तालियाँ भी याद आते है… 

Hostel के सीढ़ियों से छत पे चढ़ते वक़्त,

एक पेड़ के झलक से, बचपन के आम का पेड़,

उसपे चढ़ना, और फिर गिरना याद आता है,

और नशे में डूबे वीरान रातों में,

पुराने गीतों के Youtube-y मुदाख़िलात से,

एक अर्से की भूली हुई, यादों के किसी गुमराह

कोने में बसी लोड़ियाँ याद आते है,

हाँ, यादें ऐसे ही याद आते है…    

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Kisi anjaan sheher ki koi gumnaam gali ke

Bagal mein thehra ek andhere makaan mein

Ek boodhe insaan ke murjhaate saaye mein

Khelte do bachchon ke kilkaariyon ko sun,

Dadaji ke shawl ki khushboo, yaa toh phir,

Chhajje par nimboo sharbat peene ke woh

Saanjhe ka dhalta sooraj yaad aata hai..

Yaadein toh aise yaad aate hai.

Kisi naye dost ke awaaz ke silvaton mein

Teesri class ka bench waala saathi,

Aur restaurant ke nazdeek ke table par baitha

Ajnabee ke aankhon mein, gyarhvi ka

Woh pyaar yaad aata hai, Aur rangeen   

Kisi shaam ki madmast jawaani mein,

Ek birthday ke shaam ka shorgul, maa ki awaaz,

Aur taaliyan bhi yaad aate hai. 

Hostel ke seedhiyon se chhat pe chadhte waqt 

Ek pedh ke jhalak se, bachpan ke aam ka pedh,

Usspe chadhna, aur phir girna yaad aata hai,

Aur nashe mein doobe viraan raaton mein,

Puraane geeton ke Youtube-y mudakhilat se

Ek arsey ki bhooli huwi, yaadon ki kisi gumrah

Kone mein basi loriyan yaad aati hai.

Haan, yaadein aise hi yaad aate hai. 

C'est La Vie - 31st May 2014

How easy it is to dream, when one is young, isn't it? To conjure up colorful worlds of reckless abandon, while sitting in classrooms as the teacher drones on about some irrelevant Mathematical theorem? The possibilities seem endless, the best years are all up ahead. Everything seems believable; success actually seems achievable. Nobel Prizes to the Bookers, Oscars to the Grammys, everything, we're taught to believe, is as likely to become ours as the next person's. The best relationships as well as the severest heartbreaks are yet to come, the first bank accounts yet to be opened, the promise of the first kiss lingers on the horizon, or rather, on the opposite end of the classroom, where the attractive batchmate sits, looking equally lost. The driving licences, the college-years, the many parties, the voting rights - everything is impending.

And then suddenly, you're a grown up, and the best of all the years have passed you by ! Now, every dream has to be carefully weighed out with scales of realism. The economy is shrinking, the jobs are like bad jokes life played with you, and forget being a millionaire at twenty-five, you're hardly making enough to pay your rents. The clogged drainage in the bathroom doesn't get automatically cleaned out by the domestic help- you have to pick up the semi-eaten morsels out of the kitchen sink with your own hands. The parents are growing old, and now look at you with quiet eyes, that never for once reveal their desire to be taken care of, for fear of damaging your dreams, of impairing your wings. The stench of eternal mediocrity, that you could easily ignore before, now seems to be your constant, albeit unwanted, companion, someone you are now realizing you need to make peace with. The bills keep piling up, the finances need to be kept tab of. You drive, not out of adventure, but out of necessity, and your votes are capable of only bringing douchebags to power, for they seem to be the only options. The first relationship, and many more after that, whizzed past you before you even knew what was happening. The many wrong turns you took, the mean words you said, the many hearts you broke, and the many people who broke yours, linger on as haunting blemishes on the life you were dreaming to build solely out of coruscating successes, and universal acclaim and love.

~ C'est la vie ~

FilmSchool And Such...

Last night, I revisited my old blog after quite a while. And after an even longer sabbatical, did I get down to reading the other blogs linked to mine. Those that were started by, and used to, some time back, narrate the stories of the lives of those who I used to then call friends. Time dented some of these friendships, and as between boats that drift away amidst a gale, or sometimes even at calm sea, their voices do not reach me any more today, and neither does mine, them. Funnily, I discovered, most of these blogs too have since turned silent. The tales they had begun to sow have remained unfinished, only half-narrated. It is as if a tempest drowned their voices, like their beings got lost along the way, never to be found again. Making my way from one abandoned blog to the other felt like walking into a cemetery - very quiet, very distant and reeking of buried-and-long dead hopes and unheard-and-oft-forgotten stories. The whole experience also rendered stark the loneliness, the chasm created in my life due to the departure of these people - most of whom, at some time or the other, were cardinal to my happiness, much akin to the loneliness, the sense of loss, that typically plagues a visitor at a cemetery.

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There was a time in my life, post-school, when I was a spoiled-little-kid. I woke up when I pleased, slept when I wished to, and there was no upper-ceiling on the pocket money, thus making way for countless fine dining experiences, and hanging out at up market eateries and cafeterias, gorging on endless desserts- all at the most expensive eateries around the city. The air-conditioning in my room would be on all day and through every night. The situation intensified when, after my life altering accident, my parents started keeping no stones unturned to keep me out of depression's way. In addition to the previous liberties, suddenly, I had become the priority behind every policy implemented at home, Looking back in retrospect, I probably let them dote on me as much as they did because in my head, the justification was clear. I was dealing with paralyses and crippling handicaps at the age of twenty, so I let their attention and energies fuel my sustenance. "The parents' child is back from the dead, it is their duty to indulge the child"- I probably felt. Food kept me happy, the calories kept piling on, and when I left home last August, I was a ginormous seventy six kilos.

The first thing that staying away from home took away from me, was my sense of entitlement, the feeling that if, at home, I got adrak-wali-chai at six every evening, or if my wardrobe magically replenished itself with clean clothes, it was because of my right to such things. If before moving out of home, someone had told me that I wouldn't have, at one point of time, a bed to sleep on for close to two months, I would have probably never even gone ahead with the move. Shortly after I moved to film-school in Pune, however, for two months, I shared a two-bedded room with six other men. There, not only was there no air-conditioning, I just had a mattress to myself , to sleep on, on one 8ft*4ft area of floor space. The bathroom had to be shared with all the other inhabitants of the room as well, and my idea of "personal space" that I grew up guarding, defending and nurturing, was suddenly decimated.  The funny part, however, was, none of it hurt my self-confessed gigantic ego. None of it felt insulting or beneath- me. It all felt normal, almost a part of growing up. If I was dealing with the presence of six other men in my immediate vicinity all the time, I realized, so were they. I was just as much of an intrusion into their space, as they were in mine. Frankly, even the inconvenience wasn't as bad as I would've imagined it to be, had the situation been described to the old-and-spoilt-me. I had suddenly been yanked out of the cozy bedroom of my protected upbringing, and into the front yard of my adulthood. Today, with every hour of laundry that I do, or every cup of coffee that I make, or every time I have to sweep the bathroom floor, I am grateful for the years of comfort that was afforded to me, throughout my growing up years, by the folks back home. However, at sixty six kilos today, I am also grateful for the coming-into-my-own that staying alone has intimated to me.

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The scary part about dreams coming true is that the realization that the Utopia you dreamed up, the reality you have today, isn't quite as fulfilling as you had dreamt for it to be. 

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Residential college,in a strange city, is a funny place to be in. While you stay on campus, and acquaint yourselves with all the other residents of the campus, the non-necessity of venturing out of the campus retains your unfamiliarity with the city around you. Soon, the campus becomes an island, of known faces, and familiar idiosyncracies, amidst a wide sea, or city, of strangers. Film school, in this regard, is pretty similar to the small neighborhood- towns I have chiefly spent my childhood in. The Institute has a Central Lane, just like all of those towns would. If you took a stroll down that lane, especially in the lazy hours of early evening, you were likely to, at some point of time or the other, meet most of the residents of the town. Same is the case here. If on a late Sunday evening, I take two walks up and down the road that is the Spinal Cord to the Institute, I do invariably, end up meeting, or passing by, most of the residents of the campus, including the dogs.

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The parties, they never stop here. From 7 am weed, to 5pm beers, the babydolls as the more experienced alike, refuse to stop painting the mundane dullness of the brass world with the intoxicated shimmer of their golden selves. The bells of the hearts keep chiming at the jubilation around birthdays, and productions, and festivals, and folk nights celebrating distinct cultures constituting India, and sometimes, even without any occasion. However, for a place brimming over with so much Art, and so much creativity, and so much hope housed in every vein of every person walking its grounds, for a place with such glorious yellow and orange on branches of trees heralding the advent of Spring, for a place with such over-friendly canine companions, the Institute does become a lot to handle, a lot to process, and a lot to survive at times. Despair looms large, and is kept at bay through frivolous conversations, endless chatter, or just about anything that keeps away the having to come back to bed alone at night, and grasp certain fundamental truths about life's limited possibilities. The dreams at times start reminding one of once-upon-a-time's nightmares, and the depressiveness starts seeming imminent....

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(To be continued...)

Gumraah

Khabar hai ki, jisko humne ek arsey se

Bade dhyan se dekha tha,

Woh jo galiyon se guzar kar,

Raat ke siyaah aasmaan ko

Shawl ki tarah odhkar,

Bade hi naazuk kadmon se,

Humaare muhalle ko aata tha,

Woh jo tanha aa kar,

Khwabon ko jagaa kar,

Humaare angon ko sulagata tha...

...Woh aaj, humse naraaz,

Kahiin chhupkar baitha hai,

Humaari adhoori kahaani ko

Bin muqammal chhod,

Humaara woh chaaNd aaj

Gumrah ban baitha hai.

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ख़बर है की, जिसको हमने एक अर्से से 

बड़े ध्यान से देखा था,

वह जो गलियों से गुज़र कर,

रात के सियाह आसमान को

शॉल की तरह ओढ़ कर,

बड़े ही नाज़ुक क़दमों से 

हमारे मोहल्ले को आता था,

वह जो तनहा आ कर,

ख्वाबों को जगा कर,

हमारे अंगों को सुलगाता था... 

...वह आज, हमसे नाराज़,

कहीं छुप कर बैठा है, 

हमारी अधूरी कहानी को

बिन-मुक़म्मल छोड़,

हमारा वह चाँद आज गुमराह बन बैठा है ॥