Cherished Mistakes

"Learn from your mistakes"
How many times have we read this? A few hundred times maybe.
Why is making a mistake made to sound so offensive?

For what possibly can be so wrong about them. If our every single action is trailed till the very last of its consequences, most of the things we did, picking them as the best option, would turn out to be disastrous blunders. Then why not credit apparent mistakes,  for the exact opposite. Then why are they talked of so apprehensively, like a crime by the unconscious self.

Why do we have to make failed attempts to keep our distance from them. For they are countless and unavoidable. I don't think we would run out of them if we make a new one for every minute.
Yet, with so many different mistakes to make everday, we make the same ones over and over again. Not because we forget their consequences. Not because they don't injure us. Not because we don't have choice. But for the very simple, obvious, yet denied fact that we want to fall for those same traps repeatedly.

Its just the first time we trod upon it,that we can not fathom where the path would lead. Its just the first time we are startled by the twists along the road. Its just the  first time that we are unaware of the hiccups ahead, and baffled by the trap at the end. But no matter how hard we fall, how deep the shards of shattered trusts pierce our raw self, while we sit on the fringe of our experience, terming it as a "mistake",  somewhere in our messed up mind, we know we would end up here again... Because the first time we fall is never the last.

After that , its again that soiled path, the accepted bumps and pits. But none, unfathomable. The pain is the same. Untreatably intense, but familiar. We already know of the stabs that await us, and the dark hole at the end. But we keep making our way down the already trodden path, knowing that soon it would get too steep to handle.
We will again fall too hard.
And then struggle all the way up again, as our wounds heal slowly under the gaze of time.

Too soon we are ready to start over with the cherished mistakes again.

In a blink.

I ll let the spring breeze tangle my hair
The soft  snow can numb my toes,

I ll just stand here, feet cemented,  undisturbed,
The days can turn to months and seasons shall pass me by, muted

It s not every day i get this sight ,
The sight of my love.

Like a medal for its now blessed, unwandering eyes,
The pace of time has slowed to catch  a glimpse too

And all sounds have muffled, to let you hear my heart,
The hellish throb i had tranquilized so long

Afraid to reach out, i wish to stay in this illusion forever,
The perfect moments never last, we've known

With this silent prayer, i hold my breath and close my eyes
And you are gone, in a blink.

25 june'14

On Surface

They tell you not to judge a book by its cover. I say why not?
Hasn't the soiled torn shoe walked along the crudest paths? Ain't the most massive characters seared with scars ,as Gibran puts it? Hasn't mans face been read over and over again, with every single gesture it picks?
Isn't it all there, written plainly on the surface?
Yet you are not to judge by the cover? Are you speaking of the masks they put up? Masks to hide the scars, the torrents, the shards of broken trusts and promises, making them bleed inside? All safely concealed; wrapped up.
Isn't the impenetrability a hint enough to judge all that lies below.in the wrecks of the person they guard?
Yet you not to judge by the cover ? Yet you are ready to fool yourself and flip through the leaves, looking for a story untold , hoping it will live up to your expectations!
Though it was all floating on the surface, while you told yourself not to trust it and wasted hope and time looking for enlightenment of the hideous dark inside.

30 December 2013

The Lucent Past

Resting my head against the soothing pillow, there is just one thing I long for, my heart is pleading me to get out of my balmy bed and run to her but I am not going to let it get its way because I remember too vividly the last three I had rushed to her.
To tranquilize my heart, I unlock the doors to my past- I can see a blur of so many different colours spreading on the fading quilt of time; a morose face here and an enchanting exposure there. I thread throught all of them and reach the most lumiouns one. The throbing in my chest is holding back now.
I had spent a large fraction of my childhood with 'Carmine' . With her I was always accompained ..like so many forlone children I had also tried to elude in my own world of abstracts. Resting on the thick skin of my horse, using a hard cushion for a saddle and with a book in my hand, I did not have to do much to push time. And when the sun hid in the west and my mother would be back from her day's work, I would close my eyes and wait for the usual shriek that led to the lengthy process of telling me how chancy my habit could be. I had always adored the usual routine. But some sequence have to change.
That overcast, shadowy evening thte howling wind woke me from my nap. I rushed to my window. Outside the crows were cawing. I opened the windows and the rusty hinges creaking was followed at once by the swish of wind that slapped my face I looked up to see the heavy clouds that did not let any gilted air filter through them- In seconds, I was out of my room, barefoot. The swishing of my skirt was the only sound I made as I clambered up her brown skin (By than it wa like a piece of cake for me). Soon I was on my horse that swayed back and forth with the much resistant wind. My eyes closed as I heard the rustling of leaves and the wailing of the wind. I dont know how much time passed before I heard the pattering of rain drops. I hurriedly moved to decend the horse and than my feet betrayed me, the earth rushed up to meet me and then, the loud bangs, the sudden and astonishing pain in my back and the throbbing in my head made my head spin. I heard the clap of thunder before I drifted away.
My arms shot up to rescue my eyes from the piercing light as I opened my eyes to see my dull surroundings, the hospital where I spent the next month, wraped in white bandages and covered in white sheets, my heart itching to stepout and walk and my lungs screamed to breathe in open air.
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The tropical asian tree, the Punica garanatum still stands in the corner of my garden. It's huge butress roots grip the, usually saturated soil and almost a feet high grass surrounds it making a natural boundary. In these sweltering hot days the tree is pregnant with the leathery crimson due to several riped carmine fruits. That way why I named the tree 'carmine'.
But this horse has retired- I no longer have the feeling that carmine is longing for my company. I have faced enough music for my illusions. The itching in my heart has come to a halt and my life with carmine has become a lucent part of my past.



May 2010.