Taking Stride

Rescue

Cradled in cold concrete, 
Tired, fallen and dead,
Lives that once held hope,
...reduced to memories now,
Like scars from wounds that have bled 
A kinship of deep comfort
An intimacy dark and complete,
Fate smiles in calibrated silence,
...at the rescue in oblivious attempts 
Fighting shy of light, in a landscape so barren and bleak.

- Mark

Purpose

Freshly awashed yet seemingly dead 

The conch rests on a rocky bed 

Awaiting a trampling foot that’ll set it free 

From its stubborn inertia of salt fed misery 

As dawn to dusk attempts its break 

Cold yet content it lies in wait

In search of its shadow now lost at sea,

Only to be found by the wandering devotee.

- Mark

The Other Wing of Twilight...

M&M

Ear-marking the changing canvas of time in the warm afterglow of a newfound horizon.

Out at sea...

Moody blues
Sunset views
Emotions running high
Feelings churning anew

The wind in the hollow
Waves blanket the shore
A pit in the stomach
That unsure feeling once more

Life happens suddenly
People in it too
Bonds built in hope
Others broken, you rue

You learn,
You grow.
You become,
The flow

It isn’t easy
But life’s gotta’ go...
Crash into rocks sometimes
You have to battle the low

You’re the victim
You’re the muse
You’re the hero
Only you get to choose

Moving forward isn’t easy
Going backwards no more
Swimming the ocean of hope
Someday you’ll land ashore.

-Mark

Flight

Through trials and tribulations,
I will cry again.

Maybe another thousand deaths,
I will die again.

But I won’t give up,
I will try again.

The curse of my belief this is,
I will rise again.

Like a Phoenix, from the ashes,
I will fly again.

The sky is my abode,
I will fly again.

-Mark

Name, Blame...Puppy Shame!

To say I’m hopping mad at the blatant name changing spree we’re witnessing in this country of ours is an understatement. And what’s worse is the absolute lack of a political discourse about it! Rewriting history to score political mileage is absolutely unacceptable. And to counter the action in the lame defence that hitherto political parties in power also engaged in it at different points in time doesn’t help score points. Isn’t that the one of the reasons they were voted out of power in the first place? So why even imitate those actions?

But then we don’t seem to learn, do we?

And so when economics fail, we take to renaming cities on a war-footing. (Agra to Agrawal, Faizabad to Ayodhya, Allahabad to Prayagraj, Ahmedabad to Karnavati...)

As if the plethora of real-time issues screaming to be addressed in this country were not enough at hand already!

And now that the madness has been unleashed, time  they also rename the ‘samosa’, 'paranthas' 'kebabs', 'biriyani', 'pilaf', 'tikkas' 'kurma', 'falooda', 'gulab-jamun', 'jalebis', 'phirni' - them all. After all, all of these dishes originated in Mughal kitchens across the Indian sub-continent now, didn’t they? 

Do away with kurta-pyjamas, churidars, sufi music as well!

Also, boycott zaffran, onions. potatoes, tomatoes and   tea, coffee, paper, silk - all of which are not indigenous to India!

Finally, BAN CRICKET as a sport too. It's an English game. And yeah...time they realised that the national game Hockey is originally a Canadian export; time to change that to gilli-danda too.

Cultural integration and assimilation - now what the hell is that? We’re Indians - our culture, agriculture! That must explain our political preoccupation with conveniently  uprooting, re-seeding established cultural constructs, re-engineering culture/social mores seasonally into the fertile soil of time, all in the hope that such tilling efforts will reap a rich harvest of votes. 

Mera Bharat mahan.