A Thousand, a thousand desires.....

A thousand desires such as these
A thousand moments to set this night on fire
Reach out and you can touch them
You can touch them with your silences
You can reach them with your lust

Rivers, mountains, rain
Rain against a torrid hill’s cape
A thousand
A thousand desires such as these

I loved rain as a child
As a lost young man
Empty landscapes
Bleached by a tired sun
And then
And then suddenly it came
Like a dark unknown woman
Her eyes scorched my silences
Her body wrapped itself around me
Like a summer without end

Pause me, hold me, reach me,
Where no man has gone
Crossing the seven seas
With the wings of fire
I fly towards nowhere
And you
Rivers mountains rain
Rain against a scorched landscape of pain

A thousand desires such as these
A thousand moments to set this night on fire
Reach out and you can touch them
You can touch them with your silences
You can reach them with your lust
Rivers mountains rain
Rain against a torrid hill’s cape
A thousand
A thousand desires such as these

OST Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi

Engleash

I like to think of my interaction with language or with books in the way I think of human relationships. Awareness, respect, love, are all part of a relationship. Flexibility is important. But even relationships have rules which we evolve through an understanding of each other's personalities. If we don't know our limitations, and don't want to know about them, if we go even further and celebrate our limitations then the relationship may turn out to be a barren exercise.

Where English is concerned, colonialism becomes the excuse for all kinds of irrational arguments, for sloppiness in the name of 'fighting back'. The Empire Fights Back? It's a nonsensical phrase. Who or what are we fighting? It was Indians who wanted English to be taught in the first place. No one forced it down our throats. After half a century of ambivalence and confusion we now say we need it because it is a global language. Fine. Let's get down to learning it properly. Let's stop making fools of ourselves and get back to work.

Abate!

After the storm abated he would return home to the mainstream locality that he stubbornly refused to leave for safety.

Coming within a whisker of death, seeing the heap of pictures burn down to ashes, he wonder if his life's work was finished, being escorted under armed guard to safety and, finally, contemplating a permanent shift to a locality with more Muslims, Indianness was being crushed.
Except, his heart aches; it hasn't stopped aching since then. The question, "Who gave, who took," has become a cruel taunt.

The silence in the room was so deafening. With slender frame shaking like a leaf in a storm and scorching brine finally escaping his eyes, he asked a group that had turned to stone, "Who gave them the right to take away my life — the dignity with which I walked the streets, my mother whose lap I passed my childhood of innocence, will I be able to call her mother again?"

I was dead and I was a victim on the move. Every moment of life is weighed down by the Jinx. It is not easy to explain - because it's like one fine day this queasy feeling in your stomach which tells you that there is something wrong and a recurring feeling that you are unable to break the creation of jinx with many of the ideas that you have.

It is not due to the lack of valid reasons but more so because of a complete detachment with the reality which conficts your fear. Impeccable logic to trap the countless fears... ain`t it?

Relief alone is not enough, there has to be a transformation in lives as well. this is when I live again