My love for metaphors!

Metaphors are absolutely handsome. If given a chance and slightly heavier brains, I’d rather express in metaphors than talk like an android.

 Metaphors express so explicitly and beautifully, what we feel. They are like a verbal statue carved with utmost perfection and studded with the choosiest and the rarest of jewels, painted with deepest of colors ever present on mother earth to give a result of absolute marvel. 

You are in pain, you are in love, you are very happy, you are cheated upon, anything, JUST ANYTHING can be expressed in absolute perfection. 

Since this post is about metaphors, I want to share some of my favorites; some funny, some insanely deep, created by me, and picked up from various gazhals which I keep on hearing like an addict. They are obviously my interpretations and they might be not so precise...

First is from 1 of my favourite Jagjit Singh gazhals “Mujse bichad k” which goes like: 

 “Mujko sham bata deti hai, tum kaise kapde pehne ho” 

How stunningly and nonchalantly has the writer claimed of how well he knows his muse. He uses “kapde” (clothes) as a metaphor for her mood saying that the weather tells him about her mood, possibly also meaning that the weather changes with her moods telling her that she has such a strong aura around her. 

Second one is from a Ghulam Ali gazhal “Itni muddat baad” which says:

“Tez hawa ne mujhse poocha ret pe kya likhte rehte ho…”

The way he has very beautifully compared “tez hawa” (strong wind) with those strangers who have very bleak interaction with him and “mujse poocha ret pe kya likhte rehte ho” suggesting that these strangers pass by taunting at me telling me where do I really waste so much of my time. What is most beautiful here is how instead of just “hawa” “tez hawa” is used here to make it more impactful. 

Third is again from a jagjit singh gazhal “aadmi aadmi ko kya dega” which quotes:

“Mera kaatil hi mera munsif hai, kya mere haq main faisla dega”

This is the most beautiful one if u compares it with real life situations. It says “the person who judges me is the one who is/can be my murderer. Will his decision be in my favor?” 

I can go on and on about my favorite metaphors from my amazing collection of gazhals and sufi kalaams (Seriously! Vanity no apologies! :D) but this should be ended here..readers (if any :P) can post some they love! :)  

A DIVINE INTERVENTION!

Last night there was a loud knock on my dream doors

While I was in a flurry of heavy snores 

Standing in the front was something bizarre

Beaming such strong light, it looked like a huge star

There came in the lord and gave me a dirty stare

Bombarded with confusion I was in full glare

 Red in anger, he looked like loaded with a complaint

In fear of the extraordinary, I looked like I was about to faint 

With piercing light as his wings he sat on the couch and I ran to press his feet

His anger surfaced and he became serene hence calling defeat 

He took my hands in his with the greatest love and affection

Assured me that all my problems had solutions 

Heart he said I had of gold

But anger always gave it a mold

He looked at me and asked me “what all is this?”

“How can u spoil everything u wish?”

He made me sit with him like his best buddy

Threw light on the patch of life which was really gooey and muddy 

He told me that I had the greatest power i.e. the strength to care

To have command you do not always have to be the mayor

He nudged me to go to you and ask you why is it so wrong if all we did was right?

Why were we never a team but always indulged in a fight?

Let’s be like we were again considering the lord’s order

For ours is right at the death border

We both were hurt and we both cared

We always came back to each other after each fight we shared

The void u made is still guarded

You just have to step in and the first rank will be again awarded 

Never did I make a friend like you

Never ever will I further want to 

I know I lost that position from your life

But I could always give it a strong fight

I can’t live with guilt of not trying

And I have to stop my excessive emotions from this torturous frying 

It still hurts to be away

Just a second’s contact from you makes me sway 

I can’t live anymore in puzzles

For if a team we completely dazzle

If this is climbing everest

Let’s try and give our best 

I can ignore u like I did all this while

But then how will it spice up my bland life? 

I am happy but still sad

For after addiction to good there was disastrous bad 

If this feels silly let it go

If it makes sense open up in front of me like you were before...

My first poem- 23 feb,2009

My first poem, put together for someone very close then , now edited and filled with some new lines.

While the person remains to be the same for me , I’ve lost that rank from their life. Must be mushy, lame, dumb for many but it has been my life from how i remember it to be...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmlBpGF2VKs

I hate the way you get angry, I hate the way you fight
I hate you when you don't have time to talk to me at night
I hate it when you're not there
When you don't even have a minute to spare
I hate it when green turns gray
Makes me feel you're really away
I hate it when I make you upset
The time when I really regret

But..

I love the way you make up for fights
When you actually try to stay up late nights
Love it when you ask for advice
Although it has just happened once or twice
Love the way you care and melt my heart by your actions
A time when you don't get hurt by any of my reactions
Love the way you listen to my non sense and not say a word against it
Love it when you criticize when you actually praise
Love it sometimes when you order
I love loads and I hate loads
It's just that I can't put it to words

I am clingy, I am annoying, I am moody and certainly a bland brain

I am a fool, I am a stupid, I am the worst one

But I am still the same, still stuck in this odiously intense love hate game

I do not know how to kill that in me while u have totally broken free

I care, I cry and I die for the void that seems permanent

I smile, I laugh and I beam when I think about the past times

When people move on and get new people around

I try and stay away from whoever tries to enter my emotional ground

I fear new and cherish the old

Present is horrible while the past was gold

I still believe it was not meant to be evanescent and I still have faith

Something which is broken each day by the wait

I wonder

How difficult is it to move on….

TIC TAC TOE!

Two made the clap happen
One got to be it's heir
The deed was done in a pair
Still one got it's complete share

The fruit became a rotten waste
Over the years it lost it's pleasant taste
It was like a storm approached a cozy place
Destroyed everything there was in haste

Though permanent ruts were made,
memories were the only active part ending up as useless as bones in a grave
The prophecy went insanely wrong
and neither was the intuition too strong

The sufferer still sees good,
while she broods,
for when she conflates it all,
she feels the years were'nt bad after all :)

My Wish/dream, ahh whatever u call it list :P

We all have wishes, wishes which are dreamy, spooky, wacko, fuzzy, abstract and sometimes totally whimsical. In the quest to create a list of all my dreams 

· Go bungee jumping! 

·  Celebrate at least one b’day night out on the roads (@ 12 pm)  in a car with friends and loud music. 

·  Get totally drunk and bother EVERYONE around me :P 

·   Finish reading Bhagwad Gita! 

·   Start my own brand of clothing. 

·   Get a BB with my own money :D 

·   Go on a long trip all over India with friends. 

·    Learn Bengali. 

·    Slap that bitch (A.S.M) from school!! 

·    Get a masters degree! 

·    Go out on a karaoke night and sing there like a fool. 

·    Convert a wall to a canvas, with my illustrations all over. 

·    Join an oil painting class. 

·   Cook! :P 

·   Go totally bald! 

·   Visit Jaman Shah, Pakistan, my ancestral town and see for myself how it is like. 

·   Talk like I am a verbal thesaurus. :D 

·   Get rid of the past!!! 

·   Watch Cricket in a stadium (NOT IPL) 

·    Make a collection of most authentic and definitely antique textiles. 

·     Try bhang, at least on holi. :p 

·    Attend at least one meeting, which is super business like where I have to dress up all formal and corporate. 

·     Visit a jagjit singh concert (which I have done before but so wanna go for it again! ) 

Hmm so that’s pretty much what I could think of in 15 minutes. It’s a part of what all I think of which I wanna do . :D

human heart's bitter sweet symphony :)

Sometimes tears threaten to drop down

to wash away your face with past memories...

Sometimes eyebrows threaten to frown

to take you back to the bitter sweet chapters of your life diaries...

Sometimes voice threatens to tremble

reminding of old times with soft clarity...

They say you move on, forget what is gone...

They say learn to give, learn to live...

They say tears are bad, don’t get sad...

They say it will pass, for the other side always has the greener grass...

For a moment you feel strong,

For a moment you feel it was wrong

For a while you laugh at life’s satire,

You want to move away and go higher

Every time you feel so, life puts you through with a new low

Every time you feel u were healed, life has something new to reveal

Every day is a struggle when you tend to give away and snuggle

You can never “overhaul” emotions,

For they are your purest of creations

You never move on,

Just distract yourself and show to others that it’s all gone

You know you can never say bye

For the tiniest of things wish for it and cry

You just learn to tackle it all

Put up a brave front and stand tall

If it's pure, it never ends

Never…

A journey from dangerously close to not even remotely close

We all are so bizarre! We make connections all around. Those who are with us every day, those we speak to every now and then, with those we’ve just met once or twice, with friends of friends, with those whom we adore from a distance, and may or may not gather the courage to connect, with those we randomly meet somewhere unexpected, those we work with, with those who work for us and who not. Our little hearts let them enter our world even if it is for a while or even  a tiny moment but it doesn’t mean that we are close to them all. In fact we get close to only 1% of these innumerous connections we make. We meet, we connect, and then we’re close. Now what?  Sometimes things lead us to endings we never imagined or ever dreamt about and there we are, dealing with rocky relationships..

Ideally, we all should get closer, should enjoy together whenever we meet, talk or spend time together but we end up doing quite the opposite. We slip in the coma of taking out faults in our close ones, we start taking them for granted, neglect them. The urge to blame grows so much that we almost can’t bear the ones whom we once tagged as the closest ones! We start judging like we are a microscope reading the bacteria under our lens. It becomes a cruel battle of emotional rage. Guess this is what they tag as the curse of overindulgence. Thinking about this always reminds me of the song “Hazar rahein” by kishore my favorite lines being

Tumhe ye zid thi ke hum bulate
Humein ye ummid vo pukarein

As much as we ever claimed to be close,ego DOES get in the way to end it all and mostly none of us have the courage to fight it…

Hearts go harder

Thinking goes fainter

Tongues go harsher

Guess by the end of it, it’s the “what ifs” that hurt you the most…

Life n its colors...

A lot of things go unquestioned

A lot of questions go unanswered

Few words go unsaid

Few thoughts go unread

Some dreams are buried alive

Some hopes do not take ride

Several things shook you

Several incidences break you

Moving on is the hardest thing to do

And clinging on never lets you get through

There are mistakes there are regrets

Learning from them is the safest bet

Life is it..

Full of colors..

Bright dull pale and null

Dark deep shallow and full…

She was...

She was as lonely as a fish in a water jar,

As quaint as a lullaby from a guitar

Oh she was indeed in a world full of relations,

But it more or less seemed like a strange nation

She always wanted to sway away in fine mood,

Never wanted to keep aloof and be rude

She convinced herself that she was happy for a while,

Till her heart gave up to be senile

She immersed herself in things,

Whenever she was at an emotional brink

She tried nursing herself out of emotional lows,

For she felt alone and odd one out in millions of perfectly symmetric and mingled rows

She would be the child and she only would be the mother,

For she was at a depressing peak where she could trust no other

She became her own joy, heart and soul

And was her own pain, her stress and the hurt

For she knew that for a long time, she would not trust anyone like she did herself

For she knew that she had no choice, but to become her own comforting voice…

A city that never sleeps and never lets you sleep…

A city of fighters.. a city of dreamers ..

A city of strugglers.. a city of screamers ..

Aamchi Mumbai, as we localites call it with sheer adoration, for it has given us all, a lot, things which we never dreamt could happen, but they did, here, at this very place.

Ask me and I would say, it’s a weird city is more like a country in itself, with innumerous tiny states within,collectively called “Mumbai”. Life is no life here. Living here is a constant fight between conscience, dreams and reality. It’s not really a city. It’s an epidemic that spreads to everyone in the vicinity.  

Everyone, be it a fresher looking for a job, a newcomer in the corporate world struggling to survive the expenses, newlyweds working hard to make their house a home, a housewife struggling to get her husband’s time, parents to be saving each and every penny to give the most comfortable world to their kids, kids and students surviving the locals and tough competition from in-numerous ones better than them, stop. They stop every time they lose themselves in this constant fight with life to analyze. To analyze where did “they” get lost? Where did their individualism vanish? Did the sea gulp it or was it the millions and trillions of people who absorbed it from them? 

As an alien to the Mumbai land, I always wanted to stay in this outrageous place, feel it for myself, enjoy it since I thought that life would be nothing less than an adventure park here. After some six months of staying here, I realized that the city is not there to entertain us or take us through a roller coaster voyage. For just in six months, I’ve suffered loss, more than any earnings.

It’s a place that really washes away the past, for you have no time to look back. A place which makes you let go all the courtesy lessons you have ever received from your elders for ever minute is a constant struggle to outgo somebody, push through the people in locals, fight through the distances to reach office, fight through the expenses to live a good life, fight through the time to have some ample time with the loved ones. It’s a place that makes you a hard nut from a soft marshmallow, a place that shook’s up the foundation of your past, tremors your present and challenges your future. 

Everyone here has tried to race time only to get engulfed by it. Each one next to you is a challenge. You lose your loved ones to this city, your outlook to it, your individuality to it, the simplicity of joy to it and hence you end up losing your own self. 

People say that they get so much from the city, but I admit that I seem to be losing it all, in a matter of days that is. I just have memories to comfort me. But I want to fight this epidemic, for I want to see what I’d get back from it…

P.S.- I do not deny that the inspiration to write this post was Dhobi Ghat but i sincerely did not copy :P