Whomping Willow

 

Unfiltered Spam 

Not, Not a nasceant napalm

ruffles the roots

ever so slightly

With weathered feathers 

She grimaces very very quietly. 

Right now 

Appearances are all that matter 

Turbulence inside closed barks 

screaming into a plywood pillow

hurricane hovers around the whomping willow. 

She survived 

a heightened high school war

the evil nature's call 

Will she will continue to stand tall 

after every fucking fall?

Black and white beauty

 Written for poet and storyteller’s united’s ‘beloved companions’ prompt.

This one is about my furry friend Laika ❤️

Paati means grandmom in tamil.

Cuckoo

 

Firmly rooted at the same spot

For Two decades and a half,

I was jealous of the monkey a lot.

Jumping between me and her

He wreaked havoc in my heart.

I yearned for bold adventure

Till one day he snapped me in half.

 

Then I began developing slow respect

For this lovely bird,

Who was content to perch on me

He enjoyed my silence &

I his comforting baritone.

He decided to call me home

And nested in my bosom.

 

We would watch double rainbows

And hilarious humans

With equal interest.

 

It was magical while it lasted

But he was a bird and I a tree,

One day I had to set him free

To migrate to new places

Will he come back?

And when he does

Do I want him back?

 

Soon I’ll be old

And I live in India

They will tie ropes on me

And start calling me goddess

And worship my bareness

Call me wise &

Never let me rise.

 

Or worse

They will forget me

And the clouds will stop cooperating

They will cut me with their axes

And make me into a table

Or whatever the hell they want.

Oh god I hope not!

 

We are what we believe

And I believe I hear in my green ears

The handsome music of tomorrow ~

 

An ode to the lovely cloud

Look at them clouds 

Like cotton over the searching eyes 

Soft and fluffy 

Like a kitty’s coat

Evaporation 

Condensation 

Cumulus 

Nebulous 

Heavy as my heart 

All the vapour sponged in

Waiting to explode 

I can already smell the raindrop hit the ground

Why watch the stars? 

When you can watch them 

Shape shifting clouds 

They tell our stories as 

We walk down on earth 

Our heads to the ground

Just look around!

An ode to the good night

The night gave me his shirt

And solace and comfort

I could stare at his face

All night long

And expose my secrets how

He gifted me solace

From mundane encumbrances

For most part exacerbated by

That cantankerous bitch known as day.

Her piercing eyes

Questioning everything

Intent on making me sweat

You cannot excise the truth mom

Just ask nicely maybe?

Why do you like him more you ask

I can walk his streets

Dark it maybe

Safe to brandish out my scattered self  

And lick the ice cream off my hand

Streets sparse with kindred spirits

Silent whispers

Ready to let me in

On their simmering secrets

Once the sunlight sets in

The clocks get reset

The same souls turn back into harsh humans &

Atone for yesterday’s falter

With my back broken

I limp through the day

And surrender to my dear father

He puts on his twinkling smile

Reserved only for these special nights

And snuggles his daughter

The travails of the day seem far away

If only for these few hours.

"in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems" took this Toad's prompt to heart and the results are for yours to see. 

Silver Linings

Silver Linings

One good day , One Bad day

Arthritic steps

slowly crunching on  

Best time for silver linings

Is when you are blindfolded

Trace them through your heart

Holding its shattered pieces in place

The hand which holds your hair

When you are unloading your stomach out

And which holds your hand

When you are unloading your heart out.

The voice which might be on a virtual screen

Million miles away

An emoji in the end

 which wipes that tear away.

One good day , One bad day

A spring in my step

Steadily marching on.

She sang to me

From the internet 

A child of the city

The nature never sang to me

Neither did I ever listen to her

Eardrums drowned by noise

Cannot really fish for nuances you see

Then one rainy Sunday afternoon

The trees and the clouds and the concrete and the tarmac

Colluded successfully and concocted a seductive symphony

A consciousness stripped off all complications

Wanting to rewind and live it all over again.

Inspired by the prompt ' uncomplicated things' by Leonard Cohen's Moon. Thank you Toads for such a great prompt. You can find other takes on the topic here

Stay

So a regular reader and friend asked me to write a piece on romantic relationships. A more specific one actually but my mind meandered to this. Purely fictional for intents and purposes. An artistic piece if you can call it that

To think that

the only real relationship I ever had

was

the one I never had.

Beat my chest in pride,

every time I did the courageous karate

in the name of romance 

with almost every other person 

except you. 

I could feel your patient gaze

silently sear through my back 

as I strutted around town. 

For you know for who I was  am.

A genuine hypocrite

Afraid of All. 

Of your gentle embrace wrapping me up

in the near future, 

actually play that reel in my head quite often.

Till I get giddy in fact. 

You are my handsome secret.

Of me having to confront you 

about these stupid feelings which engulf me

and make me powerless , 

you will never.

You rock at this waiting game

Not a level playing field actually.

Of you saying 'no', 

For Fate and Circumstances

spare no one. 

Of you saying 'yes' . 

For Fate and Circumstance

spare no one. 

I didn't want my epic romance 

to be tarnished by the all too real life,

Twas very pretty and pristine

So I never took the chance. 

Cautious for a change. 

There was no element of doubt

about our commitment , 

only time when unspoken words made

so much more meaning 

than the spoken ones. 

Our eyes duelled in anger 

each time we tried to dull our love

by truly moving on from each other, 

So we pretended to fall in love

with likeable people we never liked. 

I am thinking of you 

and you are thinking of me. 

Toxic flames and fumes 

made of our mutual feelings

paralyse me forever. 

I know it may sound sad

but it is real

And that is all that matters.

Give love a chance! 

What about true happiness? 

The lucky ones mutter under their breath. 

Passion would eat us alive , 

Would 

Could 

Should 

I don't want to live in the aftermath

So in this mental cove 

I am going to stay.

After August 15th

We have all studied history at primary levels at least.

Oh no. You don't get to yawn and leave today. Today is the day I have decided to write - after 3 months- So , Please read me out . 
Everybody seems to hate history and me being an exception to this rule, hates the current state of affairs very much. So much, that I started questioning some haters why they hate the topic so much. One of the standard responses is that why should we care about something which happened so long back? England is not ruling us anymore and we're even beating them in cricket now :P
While I can go on an on about how past experiences are invaluable to current scenarios , how history tends to repeat itself and how the mere fact that the area I was born in or the wooden table I am using is so soaked in history that I often can't help but get intoxicated with the romanticism of it all or how there are so many different civilizations which had so much in common and difference , I am not going to.
In this post we're going to address the problem of modern history. Modern history? That word sounds very oxymoronish to be true.

One of the major problem with our education system of history in India is that there seems to be a total disconnect from what we study and what we see today.  While it is pretty cool that Mahatma Gandhi walked miles to collect salt from the British and that we stunk of socialism in the independence era , nothing seems to correlate with what we see today.
The freedom fighting politicians of the yore seem to be substituted by blatantly corrupt ones of today. While we read about socialism and Nehru everywhere , we hear more about FDI in retail and the far reaching tentacles of globalization and capitalism.
Indian history to us Indians seems to end with August 15 , 1947  when India achieved independence. The very few who elect political science for high school or college degree learn a ridiculously more amount about our country.

We're stuck in that moment

Isn't it time to acknowledge that what happened for the 68 years afterwards to be also included as history? Not an entire subject , that would be asking too much. But at least 2-3 chapters covering important topics like the Kashmir issue , language reorganization , 1991 liberalization reforms which certainly changed the history of the country.
If pundits are unwilling to label it as history then it is about time that we give importance to political science as a social science. I was literally flabbergasted when a very well learned friend of mine, who studies architecture currently, told me that she didn't know Pakistan and Bangladesh were the same country before 1970's . :O
And it gets worse. When i told others about her ignorance , I found more from unexpected quarters.
This problem rises in significance when we take the rate of change happening around us into consideration. Every decade sounds like a different era and with the rate of growth of population and science and technology being equally precariously scary , it is time we read history according to modern contexts.
India has stepped into a new era or believes it has stepped into a new era by electing Narendra Modi into power. This is the first time a non congress alliance has got such a huge mandate and we can be pretty sure that the lawmakers would want to 'rewrite' history soon enough. Citizens must be offered an unbiased version of the riots , partition and violence which has been plaguing the country.

Things to be added in a social science textbook :

1. Partition - No point acting like it never happened. While independence was a huge victory , the partition was quite the opposite. The fact that Mahatma Gandhi never celebrated the independence is conveniently ignored. Some light on this hasty yet historic blunder would remove some prejudice we carry about our Pakistani neighbors. Both sides suffered . Sick of all the pakistani hate posts. Half the people don't know why/who/how we got separated but carry the hate though :/ 
2. Kashmir - Before yelling that article 370 is unconstitutional Indians must be taught ( unbiased ly ) how  really Kashmir was created. While demanding that Kashmir be ours is truly patriotic , learning what exactly happened before harping ill informed propagandized news is truly more worthwhile and patriotic . 

   

   Too beautiful to suffer :(

3. Hindi - There surely must be a lesson on the reorganization of states according to languages , the tensions and unity it created. The language politics , the true current status of hindi - the official and not the national language of India. 

A crash course on this would really enlighten many of us on current issues . Unlike science , every person can have an opinion on social science topics and well informed chapters on current historic problems would at least brighten us enough to not sound like illiterate buffoons on social media . 

Thanking you for the patience if you did read me out

Samyuktha (Semi) Jayaprakash 

ek gaon mein ek kisan raghu thatha! :P

It's been a week in Pune already!! :O
and believe it or not  - I have fallen in love with this city! <3
or maybe it is just another one of my defense mechanisms , protecting me from shocks. Whatever this is , it has aroused me enough, to write a post! So let me finish this before reality sinks in .
( Side note :

hahaha

  Defense mechanisms are pretty intriguing . Do you know that I haven't cried a single tear drop yet? My friends think it is some kind of sacrilegious blasphemy from my  part. But hey! If pessimists argue that I have effectively ended one life , I argue back that I have just started a new one :) I do miss chennai . However , I am not going to go gaga over it. Okay I just did . )
I haven't had much chance to discover the city in its entirety yet. But , from whatever I have seen - it is fresh , green , pleasant and mindnumbingly beautiful :')

So here it is . The elusive list of things I have noticed about Pune and my new life in general :

Not THIS adventurous generally :P

1) I was never a nature loving person or that's what I thought. However , climbing the hill in my college ( yes , there is a hill in my college :O ) changed that perspective. The liberating atmosphere , the refreshing smell of pure , fresh air is well worth the climbing - which in itself is exciting and adventurous! Also , I am for the first time realizing that there are four types of climate in a year :P Living in chennai can easily erase this fact into a mere illusion. Back there it is either hot or hotter :')
And in other seemingly related news I got crowned 'Miss Green' by the Mess Bhaiya ( more like a thatha actually :P ) Don't start clapping already - I got called that because i was wearing a green kurthi LOL

2) My new friend rightly said , " Here in Pune , people talk to you in Marathi . If you don't know that they'll talk to you in Hindi and after that they stop." Yeah that's right. English doesn't work with the rickshaw wallahs . Coming from Tamil Nadu , a state which has fervently opposed Hindi often in the past and which doesn't give importance to Hindi in it's education system - I am at a huge loss here . It doesn't help matters that I hated my L3 hindi teacher and in turn conditioned my hatred towards that subject. To all the young readers out there - Learn HINDI. It is very hard to learn later and in this increasingly globalized world it is good to know 3-4 languages . And learning the 'official' language of your country is never a wrong place to start :)

The fundamental problem with most Tamils in this regard ( I am heavily generalizing here ) can be summed up with one joke in a yesteryear Bhagyaraj film , which sadly is still popular. Instead of saying ' Ek Gaon me ek kisan rahta ta' the hero mispronounces it as ' ek gaun me ek kisan raghu thatha' Thatha means grandfather in tamil and raghu is a common name. And ever since then Hindi has been ridiculed and not learnt -_-

3) I love the food here. My hosts may think I'm being overly polite when i say I love roti over rice. Fact is I actually love north Indian food :') Being open to trying new dishes has finally helped this time. Thank you masterchef australia for opening my eyes about food :*

4) Heavily generalizing , yes. I find the pace of Pune to be much slower than Chennai . Maybe it is the monsoon's cozy feel . It perfectly suits a lazy person like me :')

5) It doesn't hurt that folks back home miss me . Makes one feel loved ,you know :P ( even though this may  only last for a short while)

perfectly put by some random citizen :P

6) Lastly but not the least , I am very proud of my new found independence. I make my own bed , wash my own clothes :O , do my dishes etc. Being self sufficient makes one immediately feel adult like :D I was so proud when I wore the tee shirt,which i had washed with my own hands ^_^  P.S - This doesn't mean that I'll do housework when i come back home to chennai xP Home is where the ass lays ;')

Random realization - Blood clots are very random o.O

Semi