This kid who is growing up...

He looks forward to school. His parents are surprised. They think children hate schools. But, he does not want to miss classes even when ill. And he loves going out, meeting people. Surprising again, as he is no extrovert. He is very awkward with strangers, extremely self-conscious. He feels they are always comparing and secretly laughing at him. He has a morbid fear of being laughed at...even secretly. So he wants with all his heart to play, yet never really tries - he is sure they will laugh at him. Mother and father have always emphasized studies and trivialized sports. By the time he is old enough to discover his keenness to play, he is already a country man come to the city for the first time. This acute inferiority complex means that he often stands alone during lunch hours, watching the other kids play. And in the sports classes, he cuts a sorry figure. Once, when he was forced to play football by his sports teacher, he remembers the ball heading his way, and everyone shouting his name - he shut out the increasing thump of his heart, mustered all his strength and ran towards the ball, kicking it powerfully. Later, people told him he had missed the ball completely and it seemed like he almost got out of the way. Anyway, point is he is an underconfident, introverted, loner kid. Yet at heart, he is an extrovert. He loves school outings and school fights. When his mother sits him in the sun, outside his house, he looks at it and wonders. When he sees the sun, many people see the moon. And he is fascinated - he wants to travel and see places where there is moon, when his mother can see the sun here. He wonders if he can be at two places at the same time to see both. And he just goes on thinking like this. About Baker's street where Sherlock Holmes lived. About, hotdogs and hamburgers that the Hardy boys eat. About, aeroplanes and airports. Most of all, he thinks about snow. And about ships. Sailing quietly in the night, surrounded by infinitely stretching water on all sides. Weren't the early voyagers afraid of being on a ship - how were they sure, water ever ended and there was another shore? Ship, snow, sports - none of these are in his life and he lustsafter them. He wants all these and that keeps him going.One day, the underconfidence and complexes will be vanquished by his middle-class value system based on a need to succeed and he will become a superhuman. Or inhuman. There will be no snow for the snow will all melt. He will realize that timezones give jet lags. He will be sick of waiting at the airports. He will know that Sherlock Holmes didn't exist and neither do Hardy Boys. And that hotdogs and hamburgers are why American kids are fat. He will be far too smart for his own good. He will be an extrovert, yet really an introvert. He will dearly wish he falls ill so that he can bunk office. He will be a gym-freak, running for hours on a treadmill, terribly bored, yet unable to get off as if transfixed by the numbers ticking off calories from his body. Work will prepare him for the tedium of the treadmill and treadmill in turn will make him look forward to work. He will go out, get the world and become the world.

Suicide

For a moment, consider why
after all, should you not die

What joy do you get pretending
that this ennui perpetual, unending
is what happiness is meant to be
and everything else was baloney

The concepts of truth and beauty
meaning, larger purpose and duty
to do something that transcends
self-serving, petty little ends
were all nice-sounding sentences
and that life, in fact, is lived in pretenses
that, in reality, it is a series of compromises
done up well, served in all shapes and sizes

I think its time, you dare
and end this sordid affair
It doesn't take a lot
use a gun, knife, or knot

Let death not be dull
like life was...one eternal lull!

Words

Nude. Stripped of context. Freed from grammar. Arranged at mad angles. Deep, bloody, red ones on cold, white, glaring ice. Damp, wet, dripping, left to dry in the post-rain moist sun. That melt in your mouth like hot, chocolate fudge. That leave a lingering bitter aftertaste. That ring final. Inevitable. That hit you right in the face. Which are not the property of language. Peeled of language. essentially an expression of smell, sight, sound, self. Like buoys. Like lighthouses. Like compass. Like anchor. Like mirrors. That you can hang yourself with.

इश्क

(मेरी पहली उर्दू शौकिया नज़्म...दरियादिली से गौर फरमाइयेगा)

रात रेत आहिस्ता आहिस्ता
उँगलियों के बीच से
फिसल फिसल कर तेरे
टांगों पे जा टिकती थी

चाँद काहिल, कुछ देर से
जो बादलों को ओढे था
झांक के बाहर चेहरा
तुम्हारा तकता था

आवारा हवा बार बार
समंदर से पा बढावा
जुल्फों को उलझा कर
चेहरे पे खींच लाती थी

तुम खीज कर अलक
पेशानी से पीछे धकेलती थी
और माथे पे तुम्हारे शिकन
खिलखिला निकल आती थी

तलावत से तेरी मैं ही नही
कुदरत भी होश खो बैठी थी
कल रात फितरत खुदा की भी
तेरे हुस्न से मचल गई थी

Loony in the head

Do you screw up too
once in a while, you know
go get beaten up, do you
trip, fall down, hit a low

Do you for some time brief
tire yourself with breath
and go out seeking grief
go out seeking death

Do you, just like me
hit them with regularity
when they don't let you be
and you live with insanity

Do you, do you, do you
play your mind, play chess
I know you do, you too
go ahead, why don't you confess

Nobody's going to judge,
for others are also crazy,
no one is going to grudge
your madness, these times hazy

Stream of consciousness

Labile. Volatile. This moment, happily enslaved by the promise of happiness. That moment, staring in the mirror at what might in its erstwhile days have been recognized as his humanity. Delusional days. Empty nights. Protracted periods spent trying to discern sharp and familiar shapes in the blind blur of rotating blades of the old fan in his old room. Followed by feverish weeks spent blowing the dust away from all the old books, in his old box, immersed between their pages, taking in every word as the gospel truth. Born again, dead again. Uniformly non-uniform. Regularly insane. Seasons of abstinence, interrupted by bacchanal binges. Learning to unlearn. Going in circles. Confused by moments of clarity. Happily sad and then sadly happy. Painfully aware, blissfully unaware. Longing for love, liberated by love, bound by love, loathful love. Liberated to lose bearings. Drunk on life. Thirsty for life.
******
All nice things are for future. Feed the present to the future. Squeeze it of all life, drain its blood out. Let ghosts from the future haunt the crap out of the present with their fake allure and false promise.
******
They continue to stare. Innocuously - tiny, round and pink. Pink! That makes him smile. It was ironical that they were pink, he had thought once upon a time. Now of course, it makes sense. Pink is appropriate. In any case, they are staring. Together, with their collective might, tugging at his fast melting resolve. 20 of them. Pop them - 10 at a time, 20 at a time. The more the merrier. Ignorance packed in tiny, little, pink things carrying with them the promise of bliss. Can perfect knowledge be packed so compactly too?
******

युवक की उत्पत्ति

एक तितली
बेफिक्र, स्वच्छंद और सरल
हवा के संग बहती हुई
खिड़की से कमरे के
भीतर घुस आई
और गोल गोल घेरे में
आंखों के सामने
बालक के
मानो जिग्यासा से
मंडराने लगी

बालक के मन में
एक नवीन अनुभूति ने जन्म लिया
अपरिचित किंतु शक्तिशाली
सौंदर्य को शाशित
निरीह को अधीन
और अपनी प्रभुता स्थापित करने की
आत्म्कामिका की अनुभूति ने जन्म लिया

बालक ने लपक कर
धर लिया तितली को
और रंग बिरंगे उसके
पंखो को
दबा लिया उँगलियों से
आंखों में उसकी
डर और विवेश्ता
देख कर
उन्माद उसका बढ़ता ही गया

उत्तेजना की चरम सीमा पर
पहुँच कर
झटके में तितली के
पंखों को पृथक किया
उसके शरीर से
और कुछ क्षणों तक देखता रहा तड़पते हुए
कुछ ही देर पहले के
सजीव और सुंदर तितली को
मरते और मुरझाते

बालक निरर्थक
और शुन्य निगाहों
से अपने कृत्य को
अपने पुरुषत्व को
देर तक निहारता रहा
तितली मर चुकी थी
और हो चुकी थी
युवक की उत्पत्ति
बालक के मन में

सफर (by cuckoo, she should sing more)

घर जाते हुए रस्ते में देखा
एक सूखा पीपल के पत्ता यूँ पड़ा था जड़ के पास
शायद बिछुड़ने के ग़म में रुका था कुछ देर

एक गीले हवा का झोंका आया
पत्ते को उसने जैसे गहरी सोच से जगाया


वो ज़मीन उसने छोरी जिससे लिप्त था इतनी देर से
और उड़ा अम्बर की और, कभी गिरता, कभी टकराता बढ़ता गया,

चल तो रहा था मेरे साथ ही
कभी मेरे पाँव से टकराता , तो कभी कुछ सोच के दूर हो जाता,
नजाने कहाँ जाके रुकना था उसको
पर जब तलक मेरे साथ चला, मेरा सफर तन्हा नही कटा

p.s. cuckoo dwells at : www.whileiambeing.blogspot.com

व्यक्तिगत दिन

आज का दिन व्यक्तिगत बीता
ना हजामत की, न घंटे भर कसरत किया
काम पर कुरते में गया, कमरे के बाहर
चपरासी को कनखियों से देख कर
उसके अस्तित्व से अभिज हुआ ।

आज व्यापारिक समाचार को भूल कर
बेफिक्र पढ़े मनोरंजक क्षेत्रीय ख़बर
ऑफिस के मशीन की बासी काफ़ी पीने के बजाय
बाहर निकल कर ठेले वाले की ताज़ा चाय
और गरमा गर्म पकोरियाँ का मजा लिया ।

घर के रास्ते में जब कुछ भिखमंगे मिले
विवेचना बिना मैंने उन्हें पैसे दिए
आज न बुद्धीजीवी था ना ही न्यायाधीश था
आज आम सामान्य उभयनिष्ठ रहा
आज सामाजिक नहीं, मेरा दिन व्यक्तिगत बीता ।