Thriving Mindfully

Category: Perspective (Page 2 of 20)

कलयुग

ये कलयुग है ये कलयुग है यह रोना रोते नहीं थके

अपने पापों का बोझा हम जो ढ़ोते-ढ़ोते नहीं थके

इस भीड़ में भी रीढ़ कहाँ काणों में अंधे हैं राजा

जो स्वार्थ के तलवों तले हम सच कुचल बढ़ते चले



ये साधु सभी ये संत सभी क्यों आँखें मींचे बैठे हैं

मन-परिजन की पीड़ा पर क्यों पर्दे खींचे यह बैठे हैं

कलयुग के कोलाहल में अब करुणा की भी कौन सुने

ईमान की नीलामी से सिक्के हम ऐंठे बैठे हैं



कोई धोबी हो या धर्मराज, लत जुए की सबको है प्यारी

इस अंधकार की वर्षा में हम ढूँढ रहे हैं गिरधारी

नेत्रहीन नृप कईं हुए, देखे हमने धृतराष्ट्र कईं

पर न्याय की यह नायिका क्यों बन बैठी आज गांधारी?



चाहे कलयुग हो या हो त्रेता नारी का हर-पल हुआ हरण

हर राजभवन की छाया तले होता आया मर्यादा-मरण

चीर का एक छोर आज भी है हथेली में तेरी

ज़रा मन टटोल और खुद से पूछ, तू देव है या दैत्य है?



संकट है ये, विकट हैं ये, पर छोड़ना ना तू आशा

पिछले कर्मों पर क्या रोना, है व्यर्थ ये निष्कर्म निराशा

रौद्र राग को त्याग तू भज हौंसले की हंसध्वनि

है दृष्टिकोण का खेल सब चल बदलें कलयुग की परिभाषा



तू स्वयं में ही ढूँढ़ कृष्ण न मूरत को मान बैठ मुरारी

तेरे चित्त की चिंगारी से रोशन हो यह दुनिया अँधियारी

जो हर मानुष ढूँढ ले अपने भीतर दसवाँ अवतार

तो सत्त्व की सरस्वती से तृप्त होगी सृष्टि सारी

PHOTO by Pawan Sharma via Unsplash

A Tribute to Pencils

There’s a good chance, that the first time we wrote ‘Once upon a time’ on a piece of paper, or the time we traced our left palm with the right hand during school, our foray into the world of creation was enabled by our dainty dear friend – a humble pencil.   

It has seen us grow from compulsive scribblers who loved to run across the hall while tracing the path of the furthest reach of our dominant hand on the freshly distempered walls, to inspired artists who could enliven a piece of paper with controlled strokes, as we captured the beauty of worlds without and within. From joining the dots to make a frog (that most likely had a name) in a children’s book, to sophisticated geometric constructions in high school, hasn’t the pencil aided us throughout on our learning adventures?


The most pleasant trait of a pencil, is its forgiving nature. For little children taking the first steps towards literacy, it serves as an agreeable companion that lovingly makes allowances for mistakes along the way. A misspelt word or a miscalculation doesn’t feel fatal, for there is always room to erase and make corrections instantly. The eraser seldom leaves traces of the error and all seems well by the end of the page. The eraser does loose its sleek edges with use, but it still preserves its saintly white colour despite all the ashen taints through erasures over time.


A pencil and an eraser share fascinating chemistry. Even though an eraser wields the power to expunge everything written down by a pencil, one could never imagine an enmity between the two. The pencil, a suave dancer with black heeled stilettos, and the eraser, a chubby doll draped in snowy white, while being opposites in shape, footprint, and function, never seem to have nursed any conceit inside. They willingly share the bed and sleep side by side in their camper home shaped like a compass box. They serve as enablers, to each other and to the tiny fingers that are just learning how to draw and erase.

 A pencil and an eraser – a paragon of a perfect partnership.

Pencils feel like our friends, and erasers too, through association, are a chum in our directory. So entwined is their existence that pencils and erasers are usually branded under the same name by manufacturers. And at times, the pencil dons an eraser as a headgear on the non-writing end, further coalescing their identities. The composite unit reminded one of an elegant ballerina swirling on the icy white rink of a notebook. I guess my bias for imagining a pencil as a dancer is influenced by the famous brands of pencils that were named after dancers from Indian mythology, Natraj and Apsara.


Part of the romance we feel for the pencil could be because the first thing we did with it was to draw. Our first instinct as a child was to give a tangible form to our unfettered imagination. A pencil invited playfulness, for all mistakes, inadvertent or deliberate, offered the latitude for correction. It isn’t surprising then, that on discovering that we’d have to switch to the unforgiving pen in Grade 5, a pall of dread surfaced on our chubby cheeks and dimpled chins in Primary school.


The non-judgemental and accommodating air of the pencil further helped us develop trust in it. It leaves little doubt that every literate generation’s first love letter was scribbled in pencil, its amorous carbon footprint still resting solemnly in the yellowing graveyard of an old middle-school textbook. The pencil, perhaps, was the only one privy to the surge of emotions at the cusp of adolescence in our little heart. And after all these years, should that love have proven to be a mistake, it still offers you comfort and closure through a cathartic erasure.


The way we perceive the age of a pencil is peculiar. Somehow, it never feels old to us. Every time it emerges from the cavern of a metal sharpener, it seems new and empowered. It leaves an elegant woody carnation behind, that we’re pained to throw away for its fleeting artistic value.

With each visit to the sharpener’s den, we can see its life shorten, which perhaps adds some animation and verve to its material form. It works as a translator that conveys our intentions with sincerity. Unlike the pen that speaks in one colour, one thickness, blots the paper in one fashion; the pencil lends its usage depending on the mood of the artist who wields it.

It is easy to shade and tint even with an HB pencil, and there are many gradations of pencils available for people who fancy the shady business. The pencil can render a bold streak or a meek ruffle on the paper depending on the effect desired by the artist. And if one uses colour pencils, those 12 fountains of magic can transform a grayscale world into the Technicolor extravaganza as seen through the eyes of a mantis shrimp.


A stoic calm is the hallmark of a pencil’s character. It never breathes a word about its diminution. It’s often chewed up at one end, treated as cheap and dispensable, relegated, neglected, but the moment you need it, it’s around. Despite being taken for granted endlessly, it is ever forgiving, just as a mother.

A pencil invites sparks of creativity. That doesn’t come as a surprise, for it is anatomically designed to aid that electric flow. It has a perfect cylindrical conductor wrapped safely in a wooden insulator that ensures a safe and ceaseless torrent of electric ideas, as if all the creative electrons are just waiting for the moment the lead meets paper, thereby completing the circuit of creation.

As we grew up and embraced ink, the pencil kept showing up in the guise of a pen. It began with a lead-pen that held a rod of graphite with a forceps-like end. Then came the pen-pencil (clutch pencil) that remains in vogue to this day for its sleek design. And remember its exiled contemporary? The hideous florescent-cased 10 lead wonder, where you could remove a spent lead casing and push it at the back of the pencil and bam! –you had a fresh lead. Loud as it was in design, it also ushered in the woeful world of disposable stationery.

For the record, pencils have always been sustainable, way before it became a buzzword. Think about it!

And a pencil is reliable, for the ink never dries up, it doesn’t smudge the fabric, and it gives a fair warning about its life cycle, unlike a pen that can whimsically put its papers down in the middle of an exam paper. A pencil is an elegant device, that’s foolproof, has no moving parts, and has an infinite shelf life. It is indeed, a design marvel.

The tragedy in the tale of the pencils is that nobody remembers its end. They either meet with oblivion, or a speculated theft, or some mystical transmigration. There must be a better home, a parallel universe where they enjoy their ripe old age, a place teeming with stories about the art and artists they enabled thought the times.

A theoretical physicist would be well advised to keep equal attention to both his cosmic ponderings and the coy pencil resting on his ear. The proof of a parallel universe lay either in the appearance of a theory through the pencil, or in the mystical disappearance of the pencil to that speculated parallel realm!


In the era predating backspace, pencils were an accountant’s right hand, an illustrator’s weapon of choice, a carpenter’s indispensable tool. But with changing times, technology has started to offer attractive alternatives to our loyal friend. An array of styluses and touch pens have been accepted by the tech-savvy pioneers in the industry. Learning has transitioned online, needing kids to smudge their fingers on a screen instead of engraving their lessons with a pencil. And with most of us used to typing our feelings rather them writing them down on paper, backspace has become the de facto eraser.

There was a magic in the transference of whatever we wrote down with a pencil into our memory. Think of the first script you learned as a child. Whether such a transference exists with our digital swipes across the screen remains to be seen. It’s an experiment that’s underway without the subjects having the faintest idea they’re part of it. Will our departure from the freewheeling friction between pencil and paper leave us with a fainter memory, a blander romance with the nostalgia of learning?

Is the slow disappearance of ads about pencils in media a sign of their impending oblivion? Can the genius of its design become irrelevant in the times to come? Perhaps.
But when the ink runs out of our digital pens, or the touchscreen runs out of charge, the pencil would still be waiting for us where we’d forgotten it.
Most likely behind one of our ears!

The music of the wind

If music came through the wind
Each fallen bamboo in the forest
Would hum with a melody
As the breeze tunnelled through its hollows

If music came through the wind
Then each cluster of seed pods
Would chime and rattle
As the wind weaved through the willows

If music came through the wind
Each dreadlock of the banyan tree
Would buzz with a solemn drone
As the draft bowed on a hundred cellos

The wind longs
To make music

And so it blows
In search of a catalyst

To amplify the song in its heart
To carry it along as a psalm

On its endless journey
Through the timeless flow of time

The wind offers the bird
An element of itself
To inhale and exhale
And a song hitches a ride on that ennobled gush

And with this alchemy of breath
There is born a rhythm
As the woodpecker pecks its way home
As the dove coos gently, from a canopy lush

And magically do the hollows of the tree trunk
Have the calfskin sit tight on it once
Do the fallen bamboos find holes punched in
At that perfect distance

And the bamboo is breathed to life
The Djembe is struck to the pulse
Of the pecking bird

And thus is born a movement
A dance
As if unfurled
To the wind of the music
To the music of the wind

The creator is the alchemist
The wind an element
Breath the reaction
Consciousness the catalyst
Music, that golden
Life saving by-product.

Raindrops

We are clouds.
Thick and grey,
brimming with rain,
brimming with potential.

We are aware, that a single droplet we contain
can send ripples of revitalization in a placid pond.
We have the energy to share.

We’ve done it before.
We know this.

Yet, we hover in the skies above.
We look eagerly for a pond to rain into.
But there’s none in sight.

Meanwhile, time elapses.
The wind, and life, not caring for our indecision drift us aimlessly.

We fail to realize that we have to rain down first to create the pond.

But, for once, we decide to act.
To precipitate.

The immutable law of the universe,
gravity, aids us on our journey.

We fear the contact of the Earth,
the impact on the crust, on the rocks,
But we have no choice.

And we rain down without inhibition.

Drops turn into rivulets, and lakes,
ponds, and streams.

Before we know, we become a river,
chiselling the rocks smooth on our advance,
The very rocks we once feared.

And from being a nebula of meek, diffident droplets
We culminate confidently into the might ocean.

We rest in deep satisfaction.

Soon, the sun shines on us.

We rise up as vapor, ready for another challenge,
another downpour,
across the Pacific.

So, I ask you my brooding cloud,
I ask you, my tiny droplet of promise,

‘When are you going to rain down?’

THE KEY TO THIS LOCKDOWN – A message from an artist

In this period of a lockdown, this is a simple message from one artist to another. Now, you might be thinking that this message might not concern you because you might not see yourself as an artist.

I can empathise with you for this ‘non-artist’ self-image that you’ve cultivated over the years. But I would like to make you believe otherwise.

We have become experts at reducing the magnificent scope of our creative energy to a badge or title that we believe represents our identity. The chances are that you refer to yourself as a coder, a teacher, a marketer, a manager, or the underserving frown inviting ‘housewife’.

And in doing so, in closing the door, on drawing a circle around yourself with this identity, you are reducing your capacity to grow and embrace the 3-dimensional sphere of possibilities you hold (or thought once held, likely when you were a child).

The prevailing time of a total lockdown—where you have 24 hours that seem to feel miraculously too long, when there’s no one breathing down your neck, pointing to a work deadline, when you have time on your hands— present a wonderful opportunity to re-evaluate who you are deep inside.

We usually associate all social prestige to our occupation, rightly so because that’s how we keep ourselves occupied during a typical workday. But today, when there’s an infinite duration of hours to pass, how would you keep yourself occupied?
And would the way you spend this time tell something about what you have turned into while toiling away in your work-life?

It is a revealing time; indeed, when no online streaming service is capable of satisfying your stream of consciousness. When, in these moments of quietude, the conscience knocks gently on your heart and asks,

‘What could you do to add beauty and meaning to this seemingly unforgiving hour?

With a strict curtailment of all ‘non-essential’ forms of work—when you find yourself sitting at home and realise how dispensable your occupation has become in the light of this tragic humanitarian crisis— you will wonder what counts as an essential form of work.

When you’re past all that period of resting, you’ll wish to be a part of the task force that is currently and rightly so, essential. The feeling of wanting to be meaningfully engaged is deeply human, after all.

As you think about the question, of what counts as essential, I invite you to peep into the bedroom of a writer, who writes still, late into the night. I welcome you to the studio of a painter, who still paints and brings a canvas to life. Come and watch the dancer who still sways to the beat of changing times, or the poet who, even in this dark hour of our lives, pens down songs of hope.

All of these people who we see as artists are still following a discipline they used to every day for years. They practice and perform as usual, in the pall of a looming threat, in these times of a complete lockdown.

This period of gloom has only seen the artist to have taken a more proactive step towards making art and sharing it with the world. Suddenly, the real importance of art is shining through in this dark hour of humanity.

Whom one would usually deem as a struggling singer-songwriter, is adding a priceless value to our time when they put out a grainy phone recorded video of a song that springs from the heart, as it always did. Why are people choosing to watch them instead of the mundane cute kitten videos that would usually relegate the artist to the bottom of the stream?

Perhaps we are learning to find the essence, of what’s true and beautiful and most importantly, human.


These times of a lockdown call for three things from us—

1) Validation to art, its value in our life, and the respect every artist, no matter where they are in their journey, deserves.

2) Gratitude to our brothers and sisters who are working hard to secure our future, and making sure that our lives still run smoothly.

And most significantly

3) Acceptance of the artist in you, who’s struggling to break out of the cocoon of conformity that’s loosening as you squiggle in discomfort to find the butterfly in you.
Your work may have been deemed non-essential at the moment, but your life is still every bit essential. Art can help exalt that life.

It is an opportunity to make something with your hands. Go don that apron and try to make an omelette, even if you haven’t set foot in the kitchen, ever. Dust off the layer of civilizational history that’s sitting on top of your old musical instrument. It has been longing to channel a song through you. Do not worry about how good the art you create would be or how functional or relevant it is. The value of art is in the process, not in the outcome.

You might forget the importance of art when things normalise, but if you emerge out of this lockdown with the acknowledgement that you are an artist at heart, art will blossom in the rain of that realisation.

I invite you to switch off the internet* for a few hours every day and apply yourself. Make art. It is therapy.

Stay safe. Stay healthy.

P.S. *Really! Switch it off 🙂
         Consider sharing this if you found value in it 🙂

The brotherhood of colours

Once, the colours in the palette entered into a fight
Arguing who among them held dominion over light

Each colour was busy singing its own praises
They came forward one by one to present their cases

The Vainglorious Violet was dressed in its regal pride
He was drunk in his glory, haughty in every stride

Said Indian Indigo, hail ! I colour the scrolls with ink
I’m the blood of books, Every pen’s favourite drink

Said Bubbling Blue, I colour the sky and all the depths marine
I am cool and composed, comforting and serene

Said Glorious Green, look around, I am half of the Earth’s hood
Without me, there won’t be any forests or food

Said Yelping Yellow, of golden ancestry, I am second to none
I drape the world every day with the light of the sun

Said an Ordained Orange, I am the colour of every higher pursuit
Am I not the only colour that’s also a fruit?

Said Raging Red, ‘Stop the Quarrel !’ with all its might
It flashed the danger light to put an end to the fight

‘Who’s the best colour of them all?’ they had to find a solution
The colours entered the ‘prism of peace’ to find a resolution

Tranquil was the arena, from the prism as they emerged
They blended as one light, in harmony they merged

Awestruck they wondered if they’d lost their traits respective
As they joined hands and entered another ‘prism of perspective’

And slowly, from the inverted prism, as they made their way out
The arena dazzled in the light of a brilliant rainbow spout!

And nobody cared finally, which colour had won
As colours joined hands cherishing the spirit of being one !

Why the Ocean dances…

An innocent sand castle celebrates a few moments of gifted existence, before being smoothed out to the ground, grain by grain, as it yields to the unyielding surf of the ocean waves.

But on the other coast far far away, where the tide is still low , another castle in born, cupped together by diligent little builders.
Before too long, this castle will meet the same fate as its cousin across the ocean. It will melt with the chilling advance of an ice cold gush.

Needless to say, another castle will be born somewhere and the ocean wave will rush to lay its reign on it.
And thus the ocean dances, from coast to coast…in a fruitless attempt to win over the resilience of the spirit of a child.

A sand castle materializes whenever it senses the presence of the soul of a child…it’s but nature, for a child to cup the sand…and build. Children are born with the blueprint and with a resolve…

A resolve big enough to make the ocean dance for aeons…

कागज़ की क़ैद

कागज़ पर खिंची सीधी लकीरें, सलाखों से कम नहीं

कैद हैं इस कारावास में न जाने कितनी कहानियाँ


सलाखें भी ऐसी कि आर-पार कोई सार ना दिखे

और पन्ना पलटें तो फिर कई सीधी लकीरें... 

कई क़ैद नज़्म...कई अनकही कहानियां...



कोरे कागज़, कोरी किताबें, क़ैद कई प्रश्नों के प्रेत

कब छूटेंगे प्राण इनके, कब सींचेगा कल्पना के खेत?



इस सवाल से जूझते हुए तू

कभी उम्मीद में, कभी हताशा में

उन सलाखों के परे छिपे शब्दों की पुकार ढूंढे

सन्नाटे में दूर कहीं जो मद्धम सी लोरी सुनाई पड़े...


जब तलक तेरी सोच झांक कर आज़ादी को ढूंढे

जब छलक कर उफ़ान मारे अभिव्यक्ति की बूंदें

तब कागज़ और कलम की नोक में घर्षण होगा मंद सा

चुप्पी के ताले तोड़े बोलेगा मन मलंग सा



हिचक की हिचकी से बेहतर आखिर

शब्द और स्याही की सरिता

बह जा इस पावन धारा में

 मुक्त कर हर कैद वो कविता


उठा कलम, रचते चला चल, 

मुक्त कर हर क़ैद कहानी

जो स्वर्ग समाए हर सर्ग में, 

अमर हो मानुष की वाणी...




 

Finding an Equinox in Life on Solstice

December 21. The eve of the solstice. A local celestial event that bathes earth in different hues of light, with peculiar views of the sun, no matter where you are on the planet.

As the tilt of northern pole, reaches its furthest extremity with respect to the earth’s annual pilgrimage around the sun, the Northern hemisphere, curled up in the windy winter, witnesses the shortest day of the year. At the same time, the south pole, leans closest to the sun, as the southern hemisphere saunters in summery delight, witnessing the longest day of the year, just a few days before a Christmas celebrated sans the celebratory snowfall.

And the closer you are to the poles, the more fascinating the spectacle. Beyond the Arctic Circle, the sun wouldn’t hover even for a moment in the sky, drenching the area in darkness, while within the Antarctic Circle, the sun would efface the night, as it suspends in the sky all through the 24 hours that make a day.

The gentle tilt of the earth gives us so much to celebrate – the gift of seasons, the trade winds, a breath-taking biodiversity and of course, seemingly unearthly events of solstices.

While a solstice is a fascinating earthly phenomenon that marks the extremes of the duration of daylight, the human conception of a day, its length and the value derived from it is rarely synchronous to the event. There are cultural and psychological influences at play that dictate our relationship with the duration and depth of what we now understand as a day.

In the sweep of advancing technology, our species has successfully conquered darkness with illumination. Culturally, we’ve moved beyond the local solar day, thanks to household electrification. Being a flick of a switch away from illumination past sundown, our days have become longer for sure.

However, as far as we have come from being dictated by nature beyond us, we are still tethered to our own human nature. On a psychological level, each human perceives the length of a day differently. It’s an experience as personal as a dream that nobody else is privy to. A day spent in good company or spent being meaningfully engaged, breezes past elegantly. But a day spend without purpose slithers painfully, adding undesired friction in our stride.

Evidently, a ‘long day’ at work is a phrase that’s being used far too often in our cultural parlance, part due to the wear-out, part in lament of a day divested of depth. Gone are the times when daylight was celebrated as an incantation for living life outdoors in the field and the nights were a hymn that decreed us to rest peacefully.

Most of us have lost the privilege of retiring from work as the sun retreats beyond the horizon. Global connectivity and economic metrics can dictate us to work as the sun rises and sets in a more prosperous part of the world, time zones apart.

Our days have come far beyond the solar day. Incandescence has bled into our earthly night as we forget the value of the most natural de-markers of dusk from dawn.

And along with that, we’ve lost the romance for the spirited rise of the sun. We have a hard time recollecting the last instance when we watched the parting winter sun paint splendid hues in the sky, with a dazzling Venus in its tow. Perhaps the further away we are from such natural invitations for contemplation, the more unsettled we become deep inside.

We live in a funny era, where after unsettling elegantly designed natural equilibria, we run around like chickens to find balance in life!

The workdays are becoming longer, so are the commutes, and sleep is drifting further away from being a continuum of placid repose.

The best thing about a good night’s sleep, just like a good day’s work, is how you only remember the beginning and the end, while all the magic that happens in between is effortless as a flamboyant stroke on the canvas by a painter in flow.  A good day at work and a good night of sleep are precursors (and pre-requisites) of each other, in our daily cyclic dance. And more than duration, what matters most in either engagements, is depth.

Nowhere else is this profundity of engagement better exhibited during childhood days. The presence in each moment of wakefulness, in each moment at play is at its zenith. And the hours of sleep are as deep as they can be, in preparation for another day full of joy and zeal.

Perhaps what we need more than longevity in life, is the elegant passage of time, both in sleep and in wakefulness. And, as time passes elegantly, the notions of length of the day would matter little, for what would matter more is the completeness in our involvement in all states of our consciousness.

Then shall we find a balance, not a perennial solstice in our workdays where the days are always long, but an equinox, with profound presence throughout, both in sleep and in wakefulness, regardless of the position of the sun in the sky, regardless of the state of our consciousness.

Today is the shortest day of the year. Perhaps, for a change, it would be nice to give up control of the luminosity around us, and watch the sun paint a silhouette in the far horizon. If we choose to do so, the Venus shall burn brighter, in its retreat into the afterglow. While the length of the day today on 21 December, might be the shortest this year, the presence in the moment, as we pore the sky in wonder, shall be a worthy consolation.








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