I feel like a new born...

Friends depart,

silence retract,

strangers all around;

I feel like a new born….

Numb and desperate,

without close associates;

I don’t belong here!!!

I feel like a new born….

Smiles fade,

standing bewildered;

whom to entrust my-self???

I feel like a new born….

They meant everything,

could express nothing,

now helpless, but only to cry;

I feel like a new born….

                                                             

Benighted of what to do,

no idea what I do,

falling at each step;

I feel like a new born….

Aimed at building a career,

alone had to face all barriers,

turning unknown faces known;

I feel like a new born….

I now can’t be silly,

Surrounding me are bullies,

In a gush, swimming for the shore;

I feel like a new born….

To hide from all,

I close my eye balls,

nightmares churn out sleepless nights;

I feel like a new born….

Pushed by time,

and living to the chimes,

I lost me….who am I???

I feel like a new born….

A Pampering Ride

It was after a tiresome day in office. It was the delivery date and somehow managed to squeeze the application through. Was longing to be at home. I always feel so, but without exception when the work load is too much. Call it my laziness or whatever else, but who won’t desire to fall into safe hands at such needy times? Though the level of desperation may vary.

Instead I fell into the front seat of my friend’s car. I was too tired to take my bike that day. I switched on the music system. The speakers blared off some heavy metal songs. I was feeling dizzy and navigated through the playlist to change the music. I was so happy to find a folder ‘Malayalam’ and played it. I wondered if the player is smart enough to sense my mood when it played ‘Olathumbathirunoonjalaadum chella painkili..’ from Pappayude Swantham Appoos.

I was falling through the tunnel of time to my Second Standard days. My father used to sing that song while bathing me. My mother had stopped bathing me as she was too busy in the kitchen to manage my giggling prone to tickling in the busy morning hours. He would sing the lines ‘..Ente bala-Gopalane enna theppikumbam padadi..’ repeatedly. Not that he singed extremely good, but I loved it very much because I thought he was singing for me. It made me feel very special and in the centre of the universe. He called me Gopalaa, so I deluded myself into believing that he made the lyrics for me. I was never tired of those same lines every morning. It never occurred to me that it could be a movie song even when I heard it in Anand-ettan’s auto rickshaw on my way to school. Its true that we see only what we want to see as we are blinded in love. But I did not know then that it was equally applicable o the sense of hearing as well. It was only when I saw it in Chithrageetham – a music programme in DD4-Malayalam Channel did it dawn on me that such a possibility exists. It was a shock not so mild and also a disenchantment not so grave. After this episode of edification, the song did drop a few places from my popularity chart before it soared back to the top in a week’s time.

I was feeling so light and soothed and pampered by the time it played the umpteenth time that night, still was missing home, even more this time. My friend was snarling at me and I was grinning, as broad as the Cheshire cat.

 

A Day at Work

Hands  stretched  out

to  snooze  the alarm  ,

with  a  fitted  pout

the  day  welcomes  lukewarm.

Knocking  at  the  bathroom  door ,

shouting  to  make  it  quick 

the  queue  stands  as boats  in  moor

shaking  the  legs  in  an  urgent  prick.

To  sleep  off  the  incomplete  dream  ,

the  bus  seat  is  conferred  as  a  bed ,

commuted  to  the  office  in  teem

as  cattle  to  the  slaughter  shed .

With  a  smiling  mask ,

giving  the  good  and  the  bad  the  same  ear ,

around  the  cubicles  moving  brisk  ,

without  a  wink  , to  the  target  all  gear.

Looking  at  the  juicy  sliced  white  melon  ,

the  slender  creeping  and  dancing  lightening  ,

the  vagrant  wind  dries  all  ,

only  hope  and  aspirations  remain 

like  the  salt  crystals  after  the sweat.

Fighting  for  the  pillow

as  blind  kitten  for  mother’s  milk  ,

lying  with  a  dribbling  mouth

its  time  again  for  the  hands  to  stretch  out.

The Silence of the Dogs

I have not slept well for the past one week. Late nights in office. Euro cup. The arrival of a new carrom board. Well, had to blame something. Then there are these street dogs. Their gang wars. Their standing guard of the territories. Their congress. The barks. The screeches. The yelps. The howls. I want a relief from these tossing, weary, torturing, long restless insomnious nights.

It was a full moon day. The street lamp outside was fluttering as always. Partly the voltage is to blame, partly the loose connection. I had an altogether bad day in office. Worser still, the team I had stakes on lost. I could not sleep well as the irritation was still itching. Itching hard. I could not bear when the ferals started all their notorious activities. I decided this must be it. I had to put an end to it.

Disclaimer 1: The narration below is has violent content. Pregnant women and those with weak hearts are advised not to peep in.

I plunged out of my bed. On my way down the stairs I picked a crow-bar and a knife from the kitchen. A sabre like. I smashed the door on my back and stepped in to the alley. A black dog came charging towards me. I withdrew the sabre from the scabbard and plunged into the chest of that crazy dog. It yapped and fell still with a thud. Thick red blood dripped from the sabre. Then a husky attacked fom my side. My remarkably quick blow was on target but the sabre penetrated so deep that I had to get hold of my crow-bar to protect myself from the approaching canines. There were four of them, snarling at me. I held the crow-bar horizontal to the ground, gripping with both my hands. They slowed down. Snarling still, they followed cautiously the semi circular path I was making, to make sure am not encircled from all sides. Am alone. They are many. At an opportune moment, I swung hard and real quick, the crow-bar at the stupendous four. I heard the skull cracking of the first one. The pointed edge slashed the throat of the second and sent the other two flying in the air. The two fell at a distance and was so injured that they could barely stand. I approached those yelping creatures with the war cry of the Yeehats. I got hold of one by its hind limbs and smashed against the lamp post. It was such a strong blow, the post was set vacillating. The flickering lamp went off. I could feel the frightened eyes of the one left staring at me. I grabbed him too by the hind limbs and banged him on the sharp and pointed edges of the gate. The head half of him tearing apart and falling on the other side of the gate. I threw the half left in mine to a distance. I gave out a rallying cry.

"Who wants a fight??"

"Anybody left??"

But to my dismay, I found packs of tens rushing towards me. I stood with my back against the lamp post. When they neared me, every sound died out in my horribly loud battle cry. The inevitable annihilation was carried out with ferocity and vehemence. I found myself surrounded by knee deep carcasses of the sons of bitches. The blood seemed more thick and dark in the moonlight. The blood smeared all over, I gave one final outcry.

"Who wants more??"

I could hear a pin drop. I raised my hands in vociferous eruption. I slammed my blood smeared hands against the post. A steady light started glowing. I could see the two piercing eyes staring at me from the posters in the walls behind. Those inquistive pair were of "Badi Memsaab's".

"Well, Clarice - have the dogs stopped screaming?", a calm, soporific yet impertinent stern voice asked me.

"Am not Clarice", I started scornfully without realising it was to Dr. Hannibal Lecter that I was talking. But when that fact dawned on me, I was about to reconciliate by answering to his question by a smiling 'Yes', but some yelps and barking stopped me from doing that.

I opened my eyes irritatingly to the howls. The street light was still flickering out in the alley.

Disclaimer 2: No animals were harmed during the complete course when the incidents unfolded. Any animal found dead in my locality should be strictly attributed to its insensible crossing of the roads.

Disclaimer 3: The dogs in the recounting are strictly fictional. Those resembling any living or dead are strictly coincidental.

Prayer for a friend

Apr-18-2008. A very unfortunate and sad day for us. The day when all our prayers went unanswered. The day of demise of our beloved friend, Krishna Prasad. It was on a Vishu that unfortunate accident occurred taking a cheerful and brilliant soul with it.

When he was taken from Palana hospital to Jubilee Mission hospital, with just a bandage around his head, who would have known it was the last time to see him alive. Three days of waiting outside the hospital corridors hoping prayers would save him dimmed as our friend failed to wake from comatose.

The entire batch of 2004-08 of our college was unfortunate to witness six valuable lives succumb to death. In loving and fond memories of their souls :

Waiting outside praying,

instilling great hopes within,

he would turn up smiling,

poking fun at our wet eyes.

Dawn to dusk we sat

in those dilapidated benches,

watching him through the glass,

entangled in tubes and monitors around.

Prayers of parents,

nor ours,

could stop the doctors say,

‘Sorry , he is no more’.

How death entered?

breaching our mortal cordon

and hopeful eyes,

to steal his divine soul.

How could death,

comply our recusant friend,

to take to the cryptic world;

amidst us he had enough fun.

When he lay unmoved,

It  failed us conspiring,

stripping him off the surreal,

and pushing us into an ordeal.

The reek of death,

was spreading around;

in the bier - under the floral tributes,

he left us in destitute.

Draped in the shroud,

revealing only the visage;

who will rescue him from Its cage?

Pulling the hearse,

Never did anything more fierce,

smothering beneath the smouldering wreath,

only memories bequeath;

consigning him to the flames,

is there anyone we could blame?

The fainting cries,

and our helpless eyes,

could do nothing, but pray,

‘may You always be in peace’.

Randamoozham - The Second Turn

After completing the master piece novel 'Randamoozham' (means second turn) by M.T. Vasudevan Nair, my  thoughts were more in the lines as of  Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov. M.T, the historian-detective, scourges unseen and overlooked silences from the antediluvian pages of history and absorbs it with the magnifying lens of his sheer imaginative genius.

'Randamoozham' with its portrayal of the divine and superhuman casts as mere mortals and human is such a noteworthy and appreciated work that it is considered by many as the abridged version of the original.  After the epics of  ‘Vaishali’, ‘Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha’, ‘Perumthachan’, 'Parinayam' and ‘Pazhassi Raja’, every malayali is eagerly waiting for the release of the movie version of his magnum opus ‘Randamoozham’. The fact that Lalettan is back with the elite combination of M.T- Hariharan duo after a long gap of 25 years makes the wait worthwhile. Hopefully it will be better than 'Pazhassi Raja'. The portrayal of the title character in that movie, to me was pathetic. The lion of Kerala seemed to be pathetic and loosing courage and smelled of cowardice at some point. The solo heroic fights against an entire British troops were avoidable too. He would still be every bit of lion he was, by commanding tribal troops from the front.

It was not very long before that I had an argument with my friends during tea-time about the Bollywood movie ‘Ashoka’. It is neither an interpretation nor a work on the hidden / forgotten / corroded facts of history. It is creating history. A fantasy. A fantasy on real historic persons and incidents does not even qualify to fall in to the category 'fantasy'. Do we need to change our history? We are proud and blessed to have the best in the universe. I would have had no problem at all if the movie was not based on the great emperor Ashoka and had used other names.

But in whom should we vest the powers of rewriting history? To take the 'second-turn' to history? Not everyone! Though the right to free thinking is still for everyone. It has to be some one who can convincingly and modestly enhance upon the unforetold stories while the canvas is tightly pinned on the four sides with the available rigid framework. It has to be such a person can find his way to vantage point up the vertiginous climb. His work can be considered creative and earns tolerance on the merits of its artistic genuineness. Such a work that is passionately researched will be enlightening, it has to be  and has to come from an entrusted brain of high literary caliber.

Even if its my ingrained prejudice, as my friends ascribed to, that made me reason it like this or is it something else, I find myself in Raskolnikov's shoes right now. I am curious to know under which classification will I find Amish Tripathi's Shiva trilogy when I take it up this weekend.

(P.S., Raskolnikov’s theory goes as follows. All men are divided into two categories. 'Ordinary' and 'extraordinary'. While the 'extraordinary' man has the right to commit any crime and to transgress the law in any way, the 'ordinary' man has to live in submission and has no right to transgress the law)

For Whom the Bell Tolls

If you ask me if it is the essay 'A Hanging' or the malayalam movie 'Sadayam' that gave me the nightmare, I will draw a blank. I chanced upon the Orwell essay while the imprints made by 'Sadayam' were still fresh. I am set to ring up the curtain on the nightmare. 

Protagonist        : Myself 

Location            : Death cell, Central Jail (It has to be the Poojappura Central jail. The watch tower and the cells there are so familiar to the Malayalees) 

Scene                   : The night before hanging 

Genre                  : Tragedy (Terrible) 

Running time    : One full wretched night 

Intervals            : 4 (the worst part) 

The camera zooms out to of my dilated, fear-filled and hopeless eyes, through the prison bars to incorporate my complete profile with both hands clenched to the iron rods. Slowly. Gradually. Now, don't ask me trivial questions like what crime did I commit to end up in that hell? Or was there thunder, lightening and torrential rains outside? What moon was it? I did not care to notice anything in the background. It was all immaterial.Just the big picture (Was doing it in an Ed Wood-ian style). I was to be hanged the next morning. All I could hear was the grandpa clock ticking and the footstep of the jailor who never came in front of the virtual camera. The fear, the helplessness, the loneliness, the shivers. How I wished I had not forgotten to offer the bed time prayers to Anjaneeyar Swamy! I don't know whether it was Maruthi's tail or the ever nearing foot steps of the jailor that woke me up, but I was happy to be awake. 

I felt it normal to feel the urge to micturate, partly from the dreadful nightmare and partly because it was well into the night. Things did not change even after that. I was unusually tired that day. The night mare extended itself as it was the continuation of the reel being played before the interval. Woke up again with a gaped mouth, confused if I sobbed or was it just in the dream. I decided to take a leak, partly due to fear, and partly to cut myself loose. This taking a whizz business continued even when I was left with no more penny to spend on. Now, back to the dream. In the condemned cell I was praying sincerely and with full submission, how sorry I was to squander this grandiloquent life; how I would have made the things right if... only if... I had a chance to make it simple and plain again; how much I missed my family; helpless of letting them know how much I loved them... All of a sudden I seemed to realize what I needed out of this life. I felt I understood myself well. I could feel the tears drying up in my cheeks at that instant. 

I slept well after that, though it was early morning. If you expected me to follow a sincere and pious life from all the 'awakening' I had, I am sorry to disappoint you. It was just the excitation I had from realizing and feeling what Sathyanathan of 'Sadayam' would have - on a first person account. Even that excitation attenuated after dialing a good friend of mine, who felt so much for that character and even inspired me to watch it over again. "Buddy! I feel I understand that character better than you now". It is time to ring the curtain down with this egoistic, nescient and incongruous close.