Manuscript

Verse

The shimmering bits,
Supressing under the heels,
Imprint you feet..
Leaving a trail,
Leading my way.
The shells of your thoughts,
Scatter aimlessly..
Toppling in the remnants
Of the waves of my feelings!
Yes, it is possible..
To lead me by an arm's distance away
And still adorn my emotions,
Weighing  heavily
On the shores of my heart!
Yes, this core sprouts
Kernels of smiles,
Every living moment-
Engrossed ,
In the ocean of your love!

The L word.

There are some incidents that shift your take on things. These incidents either glorify the said things to great heights or throw them in the slump. They act like paradigm shifts and alter or distort the way you perceive stuff. Long back, in the dark ages, I happened to stumble upon a book at my cousin's place in the sultry Vijayawada, while enjoying my summer vacation. A book that was meticulously covered with a news paper, pressumably to hide the graphic or title, or both! It was a "Mills and Boon'' publication. Now, most teen girls in the nineties must have grown up with a healthy dose of distorted images of love and romance, thanks to those publishers. The heroes were brazen, tall, dark handsome and mighty players while the heroines were pure and demure. And yes, Grey and Steele had literary predecessors dating back to generations. And this covered book wasn't an exception by any stretch of imagination. It could have been titled your typical 'maverick and maiden' if not shades of a particular color, but the concept was just the plain old wine in the plain old bottle. So I don't have a recollection of the title, or the characters. I only had one particular quirk of the leading man stay with me all these years. He would never ever utter the phrase  " I love you".Being the typical romance novel hero, and the untamable commitment phobe, he would religiously substitute the 'love' with 'like' till the climax kicks in and he is reformed.

      So what was the scar that the book left? A bitter taste for the phrase 'I like you'. (grin) The book irreparably tarnished the 'Like' word, to a point where it got obliterated from my vocabulary list. And then started the abuse of the other L word...Love! I never liked anything anymore. I had to upgrade to
Love. Be it a dish or a movie, a person or a book, I had to use the superlative ever since. If the word love was banned from my vocab, I'd have been at a loss. Thankfully, my feminism was blooming by then in the backdrop and I never really bought the plots. They seemed as mushy and escapist literature back then as they seem now. Romance novels always felt like the friend that never grows up. All of us have one friend right? Whose grey matter can defy age? Well, I seem to have more than one and thank you in advance for not asking me to name them ;) In their defense, they can be such great stress busters. You hangout with one of them and the world transforms into roses without thorns, smelling sweet and looking pretty. They are the perfect antidote for the likes of me with 'Meenakumari' syndrome.

       So it took eons, for that word 'like' to sprinkle its moderate magic on my sensibilities. And it happened when a seven year old student of mine drew a picture and wrote a message for me, welcoming me back from my vacation. "I think you should take this paper" it read, followed by an "I like you" on the back of a very elaborately sketched unicorn. Then it dawned upon me, the beauty of a  straight forward, uncomplicated word. It probably worked its magic because it came from a child and it sounded much lighter than the word 'love'. It was a saner and a less demanding substitute for the heavy and intense 'Love'. Viola, and the paradigm shifts again.

Now I'll go back to liking my students, sandwiches, sparkling things, sunshine, silence and Sachin Tendulkar.

Determined

It's been long since I blogged. Reasons and excuses pile up. But here I come determined to write today, cause I missed it more than I could realize. iPad an I don't make a good pair, especially when it comes to typing text, but my sheer determination makes me use my dull digits to key this in..What does it mean to you? More (and more) typos ;)

I have a sea of thoughts crossing my mind, and before I end up thinking aloud and making this a journal of sorts, I'll steer this into a direction, and that would be 'translation'.

In a recent conversation with newly made acquaintances, I attempted to translate a Hindi adage for the benefit of a non hindi speaking person. Words that come easily, eluded me that evening.

"The world is anchored on hope" the adage was translated and the hard to please Moi got endlessly charmed cause the non hindi speaking guest, for whose benefit I was trying to translate the adage, found the right word "anchored". For a minute, I didn't know if this person didn't know the language or if there is a mind reading ability of sorts hidden from me. And then, after the initial doubt in the skeptic's mind, the thought drifted to how we all fail to translate what we feel into the right sort of words or expressions. We lose a lot of things in translation...meanings, intentions, ideas, emotions etcetera. What if we had the ability to translate every thought of ours into pristine words? Words as clear as crystal, that what we intend to show behind them appear through the transparency of our expressions? How wonderful would it be, if we could put forth our every thought into a pile or even a  tiny cluster of words? For what are feelings, when they are not expressed?

On that note, I make a humble attempt to do a translation (a literal one) of lyrics that touched a cord of my heart.

The raven nights spread,
You come with Dawn in tow..
In this random life,
You come with order in tow.
My forlorn ship,
Lost on the seas,
To the shores you bring it
Somehow.
There's some connection with you,
And I know not how I know it.
What do I say now,
I want to stay now,
Forgetting the heavens,
Taking refuge in your arms.

A favor bestowed upon me on passing,
This fleeting moment fills my lap.
I get a glimpse of your form,
A shining star in my path..
Like my fortune gets,
A beacon of hope.

In the sulking longings,
You come with answers.
You bring the light of  conversation,
In this silence.

My forlorn ship,
Lost on the seas,
To the shores you bring it
Somehow.
There's some connection with you,
And I know not how I know it.
What do I say now,
I want to stay now,
Forgetting the heavens,
Taking refuge in your arms.

Check out 'Raabta' - A night in motel from Agent Vinod to get the bits lost - in translation. And while you are at it, watch the sheer genius of  a single shot visual, in which the number was shot! 

So long till the blogging bug hits again, and try if you may, to get it out and loud, the emotions that seep through the cracks in translation :-)