Naturally Wired

Hello my readers, my friends!  A new city, a new month and a new thought! Am in the new place and getting visits by the stray cows, monkeys and dogs who probably think my garden is a ‘drive in restaurant’! Well, I don’t bother them too much, I let them chomp on for some time and then drive the visiting creatures away.  Now that we humans have occupied their areas, we have to live with each other in peace. And, I finally watched the movie ‘Avatar’, yes, I waited for it to come on TV! I know, I know, a bit late, but nevertheless I  loved it, a tad slow but it had a good message of what might happen if we don’t live in tandem with nature.

This reminded me of a poem I wrote in frustration. It was a wonderful sunny winter day, when I decided to fine tune a poem on poverty. What kept on bugging me were two helicopters which kept on circling above my head! (My husband was posted in the ‘field area’ of the army-hence the helicopters) There was some VIP visit due, so they were practicing! But in that process they were not only annoying me but also, sleeping babies, and birds which flew in all directions confused! Then, later, I saw cows being stoned and driven away back to their barns as their ‘grazing time’ had ended for the day! I was amazed at how much pressure we give these animals, I never knew that the poor cows had to also follow army timings!!  Then, there came a time when we ladies would freak out when we heard a bell in the middle of the night, only to find out that this ‘wandering bell’ was a large black buffalo who had not returned, and would graze through the night!

So, the poem below was written while working on another one. It speculates on how life would be in the future, I have written it in short sentences, as if a computerized voice is saying the lines.  So have a cup of cold coffee and enjoy! Do let me know what you think!

Naturally Wired

Two helicopters circling above my head,

Oh! I remember, all the birds are dead!

A motor car running on the side,

Oh I remember……all the buffalos have pulled so hard they died!

Acid drops keep falling on my head!

Everywhere pollution has spread!

I am so alone yet I talk all the time?

Oh, I remember……… on my phone and online!

Acidity is burning my insides!

Oh! I remember………………. All vegetation is finished or dried!

Can’t feel any pain or cry?

Oh! I remember………….an artificial heart pumps inside!

]

Why dont you also read what the Fantastic Cow did to the Mayor for her rights- in my 'Blog of Short Stories'-have a look!

Struggle for Freedom

Hello my friends, my readers! On the 15^th of August we celebrated our Independence Day! We are independent since 65 years! That’s not a lot of time, I must say? When did USA get ‘Independence’ 1776? (pls correct me if I am wrong) And now, we are known as the ‘developing country’ of the world and a so called a future ‘Economic Super Power’. Yes, there is development in technology and industry but we have still a long way to become a truly self sufficient developed economy. The competition must not be with any other country but with ourselves. But , there was poverty then and there is still poverty now.

Today in India we are faced with a different type of a struggle – It is the Freedom of the Country from Corruption’. And the lone leader is Anna Hazare, an ex army man who got a calling to help the society. Through his life he has always worked for the people in the most honest possible way.(http://www.annahazare.org/) And now he fights for the ‘Lok Pal’ Bill , the Bill which has been swept under the carpet since 1969(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lokpal).In brief, it allows the people of the country not only to question dishonest people but also the elected representatives. Following Gandhi he is following  the ‘non violence and fast to death ‘ method-  a difficult yet successful method. He has the people’s support. And one must wait to see what happens, next. In India we are pen poised to see how history will be written. Do the people win or the government?

Let the men, women and children be honored for the sacrifices they made in getting freedom for this country. I am happy to come from a more secular, socialist and democratic nation. It’s good to be free, isn’t it? So I just hope this time justice and honesty wins and we become the first nation to become the most ‘non corrupt nation’ of the world if nothing else!

On that note enjoy the poem below written on India’s Freedom Struggle. I suggest you put in a bit of crushed cardamom and cloves to your coffee and try the Masala Coffee! Enjoy and do let me know what you think!

Weapons of Freedom

A pinch of salt can save a life,

A pinch of salt can kill,

A fist of salt can free a nation,

Solely on one man’s will.

A length of rope can water fields,

The rope can hoist flags of national zeal,

A rope can tie a noose so tight,

For three braves to be killed.

A meter of white cloth can be spun by hand,

A meter can cover the shame,

Bundles of cloth can be burned on the streets,

or cover those who had fought for the Nations claim.

Salt, rope, and cloth,

Are the weapons for freedom to instill,

Stick, swords, and stones, will always break bones,

With bullets great leaders are killed.

………………………………………………………………

Moments

Hello my friends, my readers! Long time, no write! Well, today I thought I would offer you a poem about all the immeasurable moments in our lives. Get yourself a large mug of coffee with cream if you must, as since I have not written for so long, it might take a while reading!

Well, I am still on vacation! And it’s raining cats and dogs, and I am worried about a flood situation! Not only has the Monsoon set in, we in India faced another one of our yearly routine, of triple bomb blasts which ripped through crowded places and killed a lot of innocent people. And as always, the media is busy and the politicians are doing a lot of blah, blah,( even the statements are getting stale and boring) I am SO tired of hearing the words –‘resilient’, ‘spirit of the people’, ‘the perpetrators will be brought to justice’, ‘US/UN/UK/France condemns the attack’, ’Even we are facing terrorism in our country’, etc, etc, etc.

I, myself, suffered the loss of my grandfather a few days ago, whose health suddenly deteriorated and he breathed his last just a few seconds before I entered the ICU. I was heartbroken that he did not see me coming to meet him, as I thought it was my luck to be in the city on vacation when he was taken ill. I cursed myself as being the worst grandchild in the world, as I left for home. I remembered the whole night all the sweet moments we had shared together , and I dreamt of him smiling at me. But my father then called me the next day, and told me how fortunate I was to not have seen him suffer in the last moments and how I would remember him only as a healthy, happy grandfather. I then felt better, and I let go of him, slowly.

And thus, I realized how life’s moments are precious, and how we have to make the most of them, as you never know what destiny has in store for you in the next moment. Hearing of the bomb blasts and having experienced the loss of a close one, I realized I will have to make each moment of my life count, and not sulk or have any disdain to anyone or for anyone. As I remember from what Mark Antony said, in Shakespear’s classic ,drama ‘Julius Caesar, ’the evil that men do lives after themselves, the good is often intered in the bones’ (this is from memory, kindly check the actual words).

So here is the poem,…… and how about another cup of coffee?

Moment

A moment can last a life time,

A moment can tell all,

A second can be too late,

A glance can make us feel small.

A whisper can say softly, things sweet,

A shout can turn to a brawl,

A touch can cure all sickness,

A hit can make your soul fall.

All we need is a moment,

A moment that says all,

Life goes on and is timeless,

Moments that we cherish and define us,

Are the moments when we make others feel tall.

 Also check out what the Fantastic Cow-Monalisa is up to in her next adventure in My Blog of Short Stories !

The Road I Took

Hello my dear friends, my readers! Those who have been in touch reading my thoughts, may wonder why the sudden virtual silence on this blog since June 5 which was my last post. Well, I am on the road again! My husbands just been posted out of the 'Field Area' to a 'Peace Area' , so I spent the last fifteen days packing the whole house and travelling, and I still have not reached my destination! Hmmm I dont think anyone has, philsophically speaking? Well the movement which we are still in the process of doing did remind me of the very famous poem by Robert Frost- The Not Taken -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(poem), kindly have a look at this beautiful poem, if you have never read it before.

The poem inspired me at times of a lot of stress, during the whole packing process, as at that time I would say to myself ' why did I have to find a guy in the army, why does it have to be so hot, why dont people work efficiently, why do we have to move, why this/that  happened to me etc'Yep, I cribbed!And then just suddeny I read the poem in a book that I was putting inside a trunk and I then started writing a sort of an answer to what Frost wrote. So here goes, I written a part of it in capital letter as a call to all my friends who are a part of my life, its not as great as Robert Frost's poem,but do give it a chance!
Its a long poem so take a hot black coffee and enjoy!

The Road I Took

I took the road unknown and untaken,

Where it leads to I know not,

Where it will go to I know not,        

The end still not in sight,

But my feet are now weathered,

The feet bruised walking over thorns and sharp and sudden stones,

My feet are now hardened,

Now so strong,

No pain is felt,

No thorns now cut,

No stones now poke,

I walk on,

On all the twisted ways and bends to undisclosed days,

I walk,

To a destiny like a maze, I have to find the way out,

Where am I going? I know not.

But , I hope,

Thus I go on this path of life,

A hard and laborious one, I know,

With hope that I will reach my destination,

To where I belong to, to where I will be content?

So, COME  ALONG I

COME!  JOIN ALONG THIS EXPEDITION WITH ME!

COME! WITH YOUR FEET AND MINE, LET’S WALK!

LET OUR PATHS CRISS CROSS AND CUT ACROSS,

THEN I GO MY WAY YOU GO YOURS,

BUT,

Lets enjoy the hard passages together ,

And get through the difficult ways,

 and part,

Like rolling stones we go a long way,

And then on our own destination,

Till the journey ends,

If so,

I will then turn around and look back,

At my start and I will probably laugh,

And I will understand then, that,

All life’s voyages,

Have the same start and the same end,

HA! HA! The journey is timeless, and I will pass the baton on…..

The journey goes on….


I have submitted this poem to the website http://jinglepoetry.blogspot.com/

Me for the Trees- World Environment Day June 5, 2011

Hello, my readers my friends! Today’s thought and poem is dedicated to the World Environment Day on June 5 2011.I am not writing for any competition but I write with my voice for the trees and for the future generation which depends upon nature.  You would have already noticed how hot it is getting all over India, may be its due to deforestation and building of concrete jungles? If you go around the country you will see especially in the north that a lot of trees are being cut for various commercial purposes, which results in landslides and environmental changes in the region.

Just as God helps those who help themselves, in the same way Nature will help you if you help her to survive! A lot of problems of purer air and water can be solved by planting of more trees, recycling and using environmentally friendly items and following some simple steps in everyday living, for more information on such a concept you can see the TreeHuggers website www.treehugger.com/ , as well as detailed analysis of the environment can be seen at the UNEP website www.unep.org/   or www.unep.org/wed/

So I appeal to you to take some time off from your busy schedule on the 5^th and do something simple like planting a tree or just looking at it from far away and saying a big ‘Thank You!’ , for all the carbon dioxide it is working on each day and night without overtime charges!! So take a cup of coffee with some cardamom and enjoy the poem below! The poem is in two parts; the first part has my voice for the trees and the second the Voices of Trees! Write to me!

Me for the Trees

Oh look, here is our old childhood tree!

And that’s not all, it is made of wood!

The pencil in childhood,

The bed in adulthood,

The stick in our old age,

Slippers of the sage,

In each book and hymn page!

Yet,

We burn! We burn!

We cut, and we burn!

For all the millions to earn!

When will we ever learn?

We are burning our fingers,

We are axing our two feet,

If we burn all the forests down?

How will homes be made and what will we eat?

The Trees don’t speak, but they feel,

Yes, even through their hard teak!

And if they had a voice they would say…….

The Voice of Trees…….

Imagine a world with no trees, just imagine it?

No table to write or discover lands overseas?

No warmth in the cold, no animals in the woods?

No one to give you shade in places where we once stood,

No romance behind us lovely green trees?

No humming of the birds or buzzing of the bees?

No ! You can’t do without us trees!

So please, please, please, don’t cut my roots and my long vines!

Take care of our Earth as our future is entwined!

So please, don’t cut us lovely trees , please!

And such will be their plight as they fall,

We only take but they always give to all,

No wonder! No wonder ,why,

God has made them stand upright and above us all!

Also see my blog of short stories and what the Fantastic Cow is up to now?

The Truth of Beauty

Hello my friends, my readers! Today’s poem is on ‘Beauty’. A poet called Keats once wrote ,’ A thing of beauty is a joy for ever’, as well as the lines ‘ Beauty is truth , truth beauty’. But what does this ‘beauty’ mean to anyone? It is a quality which is subjective. It’s the same as the way in which we pick the best mangoes, that is, we go for color, skin, smell, texture, shape, weight, and still, we can go wrong! Not sweet enough! Well that’s just Gods, way of telling us ‘It is what is in the inside that counts, dear human!’

 Superficially anyone (male, females, and animals) and anything can be beautiful, but Beautiful is what Beautiful does! A batsman can hit a ‘beautiful shot’, a surgeon can do a ‘beautiful surgery’, an average person can do a ‘beautiful deed’, and nature is always beautiful!

We are being sold to beauty, these days! Colors are flashed before us and we are hooked on to what looks good and feels good. The worst place is in the ‘Marriage Market in India’, I was ‘in’ it a few years ago and believe me it’s even tougher than winning a beauty pageant! And yes, most of the times women she/he themselves are the culprits! You hear things like, ‘she is too short, ’He/ She is too tall!’, She/he is not fair, He/she  wears  glasses, He/ She has very less/ too much hair, She/he weighs –Options : too, much, too less,  is too ‘flat’, too ‘beefed up’, too ‘Big’! …….  Help! I think horses have it easier!

Hence the poem below was written, with all of the above in mind. So have a read, grab a cup of lovely ‘black’ coffee, and tell me if the poem was ‘Beautiful’!  Enjoy!

The Truth of Beauty

Some have everything,

Except a lovely face,

No twinkling sea blue eyes,

Or a nose of royal grace,

No ruby lips like strawberry or rose,

or silky smooth soft hair.

No soft skin that glows,

No hands like petal leaves closed,

Or the voice of a nightingale.

But lovely things come with wicked traits,

Stars can fall in the sky,

The sea can gray in spate,

Royalty has its own downturns,

And strawberries can cause rashes on the face,

Roses have their thorns,

For rubies people have killed and lied,

Silk can cut marble and skin,

The nightingale is dark, dark as the black night

Like a book that needs to be read,

Sweet like chewing wheat bread,

A wine to be tasted and enjoyed,

Beautiful like a carpet,

With all its knots cut and tied,

If looks could kill then some can save several lives!

The mirror never lies, but

Beauty is in the beholders eyes,

Is the opinion of the one who is wise.

If you wish to read more on Keats poems from which I have quoted kindly see the following links:

http://www.online-literature.com/keats/463/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_on_a_Grecian_Urn

Wikipedia also does a good analysis on ‘Beauty and the philosophy about it you can do a search on the site. Gandhi too spoke about Beauty and Truth, if anyone is interested kindly see the link below:

http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/gandhiphilosophy/philosophy_truth_truthnbeauty.htm

Also have a look at what Monalisa the Cow is up to in her next adventure in my Blog of Short Stories!

This post was written for a competition for IndiBlogger , Yahoo! India - Dove contest "What does real beauty mean to you?" Do check this link out to know more - http://realbeauty.yahoo.com/

Four Summer Bombs!

Hello my friends, my readers! The Summer times are full on! And all of us are baking in the heat! So much so that even the creative spirit has been lost! Yet there are brave people in this world who are playing football and cricket!! And others are busy bombing NATO tankers and Embassies! Where do they get the energy? Well, I myself have been very wary of opening my lap top to do any kind of internet work! I fear the battery will become so hot that it will burst! I freaked out when my husband told me that he might be coming back! Help! I thought, that would mean real time cooking in the heat and not just Maggi, bread and butter, fruits, etc. So today since the Gods above have been so kind to give us pleasant weather I thought I might do my blogging.

In all this summer the poetry has been in bits and spurts. My friend a poetry writer herself, asked me to write some Haiku. I told her that it is not me! Somehow I cannot restrict myself to3 lines and 3,5,3 syllables! Though I find Haiku poetry really beautiful, but like SRK said in KKHH, its 'not my type'! But what I did manage were four short poems, all written quickly due to being moved with emotion. Was it the summer time blues?

The Hurt, The Soul, The Death, and The Walk are my four summer poetry bombs for you !The first poem was written in sadness of thinking of the past, the second I wrote when I heard that one of the wives of an army officers had lost her husband very suddenly. Yes, we army wives have a sisterhood-if one is saddened all of us are as well. The third is for the person who gave me a bowl of Dhokla's (savory cakes) when I had eaten only bread and butter that night. The simpleness and love in the eyes on giving was just amazing! The fourth was written in mere thinking about the past, present and future and uncertainty. They are all different poem but with a single thread.

So take your cup of cold, cold coffee and ice cream and quickly read the poems below before it get too hot!

The Hurt

The setting Sun sulks,

The Nightingale wails,

And so do the lonely souls,

Is it too late to heal?

The Soul

Go! Simple soul, seek!

Travel over hot ashes and fearful forests,

To the cool oasis of peace.

The  Death

Frenzy and fiery, focused eyes,

The  dry green grass turns wet crimson ,

Gone.

And thus,

In that instant a heart breaks,

In that moment a star  born.

The Walk

In solitude sitting still,

In the shade of the past, then

Tripping over the future,

Treading on the present,

I walk into the sun, and

Wide eyed face,

The unavoidable destiny.

Check out the next adventure of Monalisa the Cow in my blog of short stories!

Also see,  if you wish some articles on how to beat the summer heat and know about the summer blues (yes they exist!) at the following links : http://www.ehow.com/how_2319796_beat-summer-heat.html
http://www.ehow.com/how_2096459_beat-summertime-blues.html , http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-05-12/health/29535420_1_heat-stroke-coconut-water-food-poisoning.