BANDISH


13

Ek bewafaai aur mili tumhari jeb se,
Siahi ke nishaan, ek muchade hue bill pe.
Kuch der sambhale rakha unhe,
Maine apne mathe ki shikan pe.
Befikr nazar churai tumne,
Main bhi muskura di,
Tumhare lateefe ki ot main,
Din ka varnan, awaaz main hasee aur ulass.
Chaha tumse pooch hi lu aaj,
Laboon tak laakar, rukh gayi kitni baar.
Goonj us sawaal ki,
Shanka mere mann Ki
Kitne kadam door ho tum, es dayere paar
Us siahi ko toh baha diya maine,
Katra katra kar, jeeni hogi, ab yeh daraar.

Kaal


You know its been a great weekend, when on a Monday, you pull out the scribbling on the back of an industry report, to update a long forgotten blog. An inspired moment, unedited, a first in hindi for me.

1

Kaal

Is shor main jo ulajhta ja raha hoon,

Apne mann ke dhagaon ko-bun,

Kabhi udhaidta ja raha hoon

Zindagi ke pal jo beet ja rahe hain

Unhe samait,

Sulajhta ja raha hoon.

Seekh raha hoon,

Sambhal raha hoon.

Apni ki hui galtiyoon pe kabhi itra,

Kabhi sukhoon bhi pa raha hoon.

Mudh ke dekhna, galat nahi.

Aage jo hai, uske beetne pe,

Apne kal ki udharana pata ja raha hoon.

Meri lakiroon main, meri gaatha nahi.

Khud ki jeevani, main likhta aa raha hoon,

Guroor ya abhimaan hai,

Vidhata ki kuch dain bhi.

Karamoon ke upkaar,

Aage apne soch ke buland iraadon pe chaltein ja raha hoon.

Finding love in unreal places


Finding love in unreal places
A beautiful story, defaces.
Vacillating countenance
Dry eyes cried aloud.
How could the gospel truth
Be so far beyond?
Never looked me in the eye.
All that numbed my head,
Affections without a stance.
Belied.
Trials of belief in self,
Time and again.
Dainty love,
Coffined his strength.
Victory of her demonstrated vulnerabilities,
There was never a battle to win.
Can’t cry foul and yellow,
No bone to pick,
Each conceded,
Cackles to bouts of silence,
Venting of one, sans duologue.
Relenting once into momentousness
No memories, just flashes.
Blinded then, in hindsight.
Surreal, in time.
looking for love in unreal places.
Finding love in undone spaces

Cents to a Dollar


Every cent you take
You give back a dollar.
Every moment you fake,
You get closer to reality.
Its all about un-thought unscrupulous mortality.
Deathless.
Breathing life into listless insanity.
What really is sanity?
Is the glass half full?
Or egg half broken?
Am I simply an opportunist?
A characterization of contrived adherence?
or a picture of societal free fall?
You will love me tomorrow,
Do you see me with you today?
Time is not uni-dimensional
But a multidimensional mess.
Walking dark alleys,
Silencing poltergeists.
Or is that scream a longing for silence?
Palpable.
Untouched.
or conveniently forgotten?
Delving into condescending duality,
The spell of frivolous lust and greed.
Knowing men are vents for gods sins
HER unpretentious pleasures
His happiness but a mirage.
HER love for him, a masquerade.
And when was it that you saw beyond the almighty’s mask?
HER surreal identity,
His unforgiving hypocrisy,
Both brutal.

I sit by the sidewalk,
Investing cents for a dollar to roll back.

-Jugalbandi @Route04

Art & Science of Deception


Elementary, my dear Watson!
And that’s what the world remembers.
A line that never existed.
The untruth that lives each day and dies.

We see what we want to.
We hear what we desire.
We believe an illusion.
And when the illusion breaks,
Say that the world conspires?

Deception is a strange game.
It relays a vicious cycle.
It plays on the weakest link,
Trust in another,
Until it feeds into your self
The beginning is where it ends.

What you give is what you earn.
What you get is,
Neither fate,
Nor out of turn.

Tied to strings,
Self-professed, oh so detached!
Holding onto the last straw,
That sinks.
Instead,
Believe in oneness and survive.

Definitions and boundaries,
Amorphous principles,
Open to scrutiny and sub-judice.
Collective intelligence,
Limiting individuality,
Pre-ordained paths to happiness.
Crafted concepts of social being.

Subterfuge of who we are
And perception.
Striving for acceptance,
Moving to religion.
Restricting living,
To sheer existence.

One amongst the plenteous stages of evolution
Is self –admission
to ravenous narcissism and intemperance.
Arguably,
love of self is ‘the’ driving force
Confronted with a tirade of continuous dissent.

All are born with colored eyes
With colored love and a colored mind.
with the ongoing struggle to demystify
with a challenge to revive
a sonnet called life.

In Love, Margarita


There is nothing more I could do
but tell you how and why,
I love you more,
each time I look into your eyes.
It is like falling in love with you from the very beginning
The time seems to rewind,
All the people and moments seem to standstill.
To our hopes and the glint of our love
There is a flame you bring to our lives
There is nothing more I could do
But express the love for you I carry inside
To tell you that you are the one for me until tomorrows
Until the suns and moons of our lives
Together we see the secret gardens of our selves in each others arms
There is nothing more I could do
But tell you how deeply I love you dear
Love you each day of my life,
Like the one day that it takes to survive.
It is our one life we make it together
We carry each other through good times and otherwise
Hold each other & come back from occasions we never did part
Awake and relentless we hold ourselves together,
With every rhythm I dance to, every tune I hum
We know it is our song, we have sung it together
Rejoicing and rekindling the love that blossoms
There is nothing more I could do
But tell you how and why
You mean everything that defines meaning in this life and in those to come.
– In love, Margarita