Mind The Gap

Dear,

This night I gaze above, I try to connect the dots that stretch through the darkness of the sky, closing a light year gap between you and me. I have tried to retrace them in the light of the dawn, I see the bird-path, and I think of you. I see the sign, the time is near for me to go back.

I think often writing you a letter, but then I open up the drawer at my desk and look at those numerous notes- once had I written but couldn't pass them to you. I look back at the door I have closed behind. Many bridges we both had burned and in the afterglow we parted. And now, when I think I might go back, I do not know if you will be there waiting for me at the other end. I do not know if I can ever find my way back. 

This world will always be full of letters, and some of those letters will be mine, unwritten, drawn through lines of crease that close them to fold at the day's end.

For you, I wait for the day-break. For you, I write poems of our passing time, running through the shadows of sadness and laughter.

Me...

West Of The Sun

There is a syndrome among the Inuits, called as - Piblokto, Pibloktoq or Arctic hysteria or Hysteria Siberiana. It is described as a condition exclusively appearing in Eskimo societies living within the Arctic Circle. Appearing most prevalently in winter, it is considered to be a form of a culture-bound syndrome.

Dietary science says - This culture-bound syndrome is possibly linked to vitamin A toxicity. The native Eskimo diet provides rich sources of vitamin A and is possibly the cause or a causative factor. The ingestion of organ meats, liver of arctic fish, mammals, where the vitamin is stored in toxic quantities can be fatal.

As if, 

"Imagine this. You're a farmer, living all alone on the Siberian tundra. Day after day you plow your fields. As far as the eye can see, nothing. To the north, the horizon, to the east, the horizon, to the south, to the west, more of the same. Every morning, when the sun rises in the east, you go out to work in your fields. When it's directly overhead, you take a break for lunch. When it sinks in the west, you go home to sleep. 

And then one day, something inside you dies. Day after day you watch the sun rise in the east, pass across the sky, then sink in the west, and something breaks inside you and dies. You toss your plow aside and, your head completely empty of thought, begin walking toward the west. Heading toward a land that lies west of the sun. Like someone, possessed, you walk on, day after day, not eating or drinking, until you collapse on the ground and die. That's hysteria siberiana." - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - South of the Border, West of the Sun / Murakami

When something inside dies, the shell that is all left behind shrivels. Looking up, the same sun rise and set everyday, and nothing really stirs the heart. On the wake what lay in front of the eyes are the roads to infinity. Imagine that lighthouse you have thought will glow for you to the eternity. But when even that gleam of light extinguishes, you still continue to walk. 
For, it's always what lay beyond will remain elusive.

Now, The whole sky is for me

Valentine's Day always reminds me of the book ''Little Prince''. I know, it's a children book 'n one of my favourites. Yet, growing up I've found it more 'matured' than ever. Only immature thing I did was to write once a good-bye note based on its last chapter - "All men have the stars," and when I was being asked - ''if this is for me, hell... I'd be damn proud!''
I kept mum...

"And at night you will look up at the stars. Where I live everything is so small that I cannot show you where my star is to be found. It is better, like that. My star will just be one of the stars, for you. And so you will love to watch all the stars in the heavens . . . they will all be your friends. And, besides, I am going to make you a present . . .

All men have the stars, but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You--you alone--will have the stars as no one else has them--

In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night . . . You--only you--will have stars that can laugh !

And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh!' And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you . . .

It will be as if, in place of the stars, I had given you a great number of little bells that knew how to laugh . . .

You know, it will be very nice. I, too, shall look at the stars. All the stars will be wells with a rusty pulley. All the stars will pour out fresh water for me to drink . . .

That will be so amusing! You will have five hundred million little bells, and I shall have five hundred million springs of fresh water . . ."

Now I have changed. That's not a news. That was something inevitable. But I have grown up into something else. That is different. Now things are more like : on 14th eve, where we both 've met years ago, I will shout ''RUN FOREST RUN" for you. You can chant - RUN LOLA RUN!!! Depending on how you feel. 


But I will always feel better. Because, now I have my stars. The whole sky is for me. 

Under the Shadow of Blasphemy

Islam Believes in Freedom - Wahiduddin Khan

Blasphemy is in the news. According to general perception, Islam prescribes capital punishment to a person who indulges in blasphemy, that is using profane language against the Prophet of Islam. But this concept of blasphemy is completely alien to the original teaching of Islam. Before the advent of Islam, difference of belief was also punishable act. They used to punish on matters of belief just as on mats of social crime. This old practice is called religious persecution in history. Islam abolished this practice. The prophet of Islam declared that personal belief is a subject of discussion and persuasion rather than a legal punishment.

However, if non-believers use profane language against the Prophet, Muslims are directed not to react. They have only two options, either to simply ignore it or to respond on equal basis, that is, issuing statement in return for a statement. The Quran says : " The recompense of an ill-deed is an the like thereof (42:20)." According to this injunction, reaction must be on equal basis, that is, word in return for word, statement in return for statement, book in return for book.

If you go through the Quran and the hadith ( sayings and actions of the Prophet of Islam ), the only two authentic sources of Islam, you will find that there is not a single Quraniv verse or hadith that gives this kind of injunction which says: " Man shatama nabiyakum faqtuluhu. ( Kill the person who commits blasphemy against the Prophet )."

Such an injunction was added in the Islamic law only during the Abbasid caliphate, about 150 years after the death (632 AD) of the Prophet. Although the majority of the Fuqaha ( Muslim jurists )of the period accepted the law, it was clearly an innovation which is not acceptable in Islam.

According to a well known hadith, there are three authentic periods of the Islamic history: the period of the Prophet, and the period of Sahaba ( companions of the prophet ), and the period of Tabein ( companions of the companions ). It is a fact that all the Fuqaha belonged to the Abbasid period which came after these authentic periods. According to a hadith. the Prophet of Islam has said : " I have left behind for you thaqaalan, two authentic sources of Islam: the book of God, and the Sunnah of the Prophet. You will not astray till you adhere to these authentic sources." (Mu'atta malik, hadith no. 1661). And those additions made by thee Muslim jurists of the later history are certainly not a part of the authentic sources. According to this Islamic injunction, if there is a person who commits blasphemy , then the responsibility of Muslims is to meet him and persuade him and to remove his misunderstandings by peaceful means and if supposing he fails to understand then Muslims are left only with only one option, that is to pray for him.

There is ample of evidence that tells us what to do in such cases. For example, once when Prophet was in Mecca, one idol worshipper came to him and told him face to face. " Muzammanan abaina (O Muhammad you are a condemned person.)" The Prophet simply smiled. The smile was a kind of a moral response and was bound to hit his conscience. He fell into introspection. And after some time he accepted him as the Prophet, and became one of his followers.

Islam greatly believes in freedom of expression. i would like to say that the secular law of India in this context is more Islamic than the so-called Islamic law of Pakistan.

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Wahiduddin Khan is an Islamic spiritual scholar and founder of Center for Peace and Spirituality International

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wahiduddin_Khan

as published on January 24,2011 edition of India Today

what a colour looks like ? how will I define it ? only I know one thing that me and you are blessed. Blessed in a way more than we can imagine...

To my gravedigger

I'm almost on a verge to check in the heartbreak hotel. The partouze will soon be over, I'll wear the same mourning clothes just like everyone, but let that be on tomorrow. Today I'll live like there was no tomorrow to think about. There will be no tomorrow to look forward. It's today that only have I got. So do not scorn me for being a fool to dream on. It's today I live. It's today that always stays with me forever, making my limits stretched to immortality.


I'm abhorring the sights of the people exhibiting the grief  in manifolds, cloaked like the old druids within the circle of Stonehenge...forgetting it was the life we all supposed to celebrate. Grief is inevitable but erecting a disfigured tomb of Nosferatu, like a melancholy franchise.... hardly I can afford that. Tears drips down but it's the Lestat, I've chosen myself to become. Trying to find a meaning from the darkness within .

I'm human—my "memory is no more than a sieve". Time heals all wounds for my kind."Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me''...it will; what I'm finding hardest to forgo, it will pass over with each trickle of warm blood through my veins.

But still a question rages within, whether is it out of compulsion we are made prone to sadness? The whole erection of vampire Nosferatu is sucking my blood and leaving me numb. Battles are lost without being fought. Self-appointed adversities are vindictive about my slipping away. I'd tried to rise up and to feel the taste of rouge but I didn't care. It wasn't a disaster. I lost two cities, lovely ones, a vaster realm once I called my own. Many emotions were washed down when the banks of the two rivers on those two places were flooded. Like places, peoples were lost too. No, it's still not a disaster. Though it looks like one. And it will look like so, when I will lose the city I'm in, with the river flowing through it, people I loved here and the whole the continent.

Pertinent problem I'm facing is : when I try to look back in some of those few moments, I thought I complete. I don't find any faces to remember. The faces, those were visible then, not that I'd to imagine them. But back in here, now it's only words I do remember. Black and white words of happiness, sorrow, despair, joy and exhilaration. I'm not allowed to dream. No no, not here. Elsewhere I am free. Here it would be bad, like it's worse to take someone else's toy while they were asleep. Bound to my little existent conscience, through the mazes in my sub conscious what roams and haunts my dream is only memories. But memories devoid of moments. It's only the dialogues but who are delivering them, can't be seen. I slept today and for last few days only with words swirling inside my mind. Without any shapes and feel. Only the past is always dancing in the tune of my present.

Still under the splendid suns, around the veil of morning mists and along the blowing winds....life is worthy of all the turmoils. While the few glimpses of serene peace are the reflections of those moments where I've fallen in love with it over and over again.

Thought home could be a safer refuge, going there...back in home, spending few moments in reflection of past meets present would assuage the suffocation. But suddenly the barriers got forged stronger and higher...it's seeming impossible to scale. Not really, but what seems as what they are. I miss my winters back home. I miss the prolonged autumns, ushering with rainy showers while stretched along with dewy mists. I miss the dry springs with sudden arrival of storms over parched advent in summer. I don't miss the summer that much. May be because I am going through my balmy summers. That's gonna be staying around for a while. In fact I miss my home and the small town but never agree to the fact that I do...deep rooted it might seem that I know, I can never go back home, stuck at the carousal of metropolis, I'm not going to find out the reason behind my self denial, not that the truth would be something I must avoid at all cost, I felt it long before I can express, but I know somehow that I don't want to be liberated from that bondage, knotted somewhere, better remain not found and untouched.