End

I sit in front of a huge office building, all blue glass. The world is reflected in the glass, some people, some faraway houses, everything and everyone but me. Maybe I’m the unfortunate one, who unwittingly chose to sit in front of the few opaque tiles. Or maybe I’m just not there.

Little black birds sweep close to the ground, like a jubilant celebration of a funeral. I see a woman taking down clothes from a clothes-line, on the terrace of one faraway house. There’s a red cloth flying against the cloudy sky, I can’t say if it’s a struggle for freedom or a child-like game against the wind.

I hope she doesn’t take down the red cloth. I hope the birds don’t stop circling around me. The red cloth reminds me of the beauty of freedom, and solitude. The birds remind me that the world doesn’t end when people like me go. These are the little things that I’m anchoring my little life on.

The woman leaves the red cloth on the line. Thank you. I think I will be alright some day. Instead of getting beaten about by the wind, I will soar in it again. Alone and finally happy. Or atleast content.

I’m now walking back to enacting my life. People stare at me and then look away. Most people don’t like being reminded of pain. Some stare hard and keep staring, maybe taking a morbid pleasure in someone else’s suffering or maybe they recognise pain as an everyday trade. How unhappy am I? I look into the glass to find a measure. I see green leaves and people passing, but I’m not there. Maybe that’s a cruel answer.

Rashmi Mishra

mona.rashmi@gmail.com

No Love for Beasts

Because the purity of the soul and the depth of a heart have always been and will always be overshadowed by the outer physical beauty, this one’s for all those beautiful souls.

For heaven’s sake my heart,
Keep secret your Love.
Contain it all inside you,
Hide it from those you see.
For love’s not meant for beasts,
It’s only for Angels and Fairies.

‘Coz he who reveals secrets,
Is considered to be dark.
Isolation and Anger serve his companion,
And loneliness becomes his friend.
Silence and secrecy serve him better
For he who falls In Love.

For heaven’s sake my mind,
Confide all your thoughts.
Make the heart of stone
And disguise all your tears,
Then may the skies fall and seas roar,
And you may remain safe.

Don’t answer “Who is she?”
For anyone who asks.
Say She’s just another person
From so many amongst the world.
And Walk away as you laugh,
Pretending She’s of no consequence.

For heaven’s sake my love,
Conceal all your passions
And accept all your sorrows
For sorrows help in pain.
‘Coz pain is the medicine
For those with soul of stone.

And love to the soul
Is as a glass containing wine,
What you see is just liquid,
What’s hidden is its spirit.
And when the soul is addicted,
It craves for more and more.

For heaven’s sake my heart,
Understand, understand
Love’s not meant for all.
Sometimes, somewhere, it may be that you fall
And cry out for help and reach
But remember,
Love’s not meant for beasts,
Love’s not meant for beasts….”

Gagan Preet Singh

configuregagan@gmail.com

It’s just another day!

While I came to learn in my new office
that I got this Sunday working,
My heart was heavy and I was tensed
Yet I had to be on time, and so I did.
Few colleagues around and loads of work to do.
This day has never got me working, such is the change.
Moving a stair up, I have grown up to know
How the meaning of a single thing changes through time.
How every thing keeps you staring with a different eye.
And how we get used to accepting these differences
And contradictions which prove every thing learnt
In childhood to be a mere bookish theory,
Yet we live without revolting
We live with every sudden change
We live without thinking
We live this USUAL way of living life.
And then we hear it now and then
What’s the big deal about it?
It’s just another thing and it’s just another day!

Shruti Suman

NIFT, Mumbai

sumansan10@gmail.com

The Story of His Eyes…

First crush is the most beautiful feeling in the world. It is a step towards adolescence, a sign of our maturing self. First crush is always special in everyone’s life.

I was barely nine years old when I saw him for the first time. He was mysterious; a handsome ten year old playing football in the rain, tall for his age with a great physique. And before I could realize that I had frozen at my spot, he turned around. I guess that was the start because his one gaze sent an electric shock down my spine. I stole away my gaze from his, feeling my cheeks go hot. I blushed for the first time.

Back at school, I found out that he was my senior. Never in my life had I so meaninglessly prayed to God like I did that day to make him my classmate. It was a big mistake, as I found out a year later because he had failed that year. Childish as I was, I was happy. He was in my class.

Gradually, our friendship started. He hardly spoke to any girl, but with me, he opened up, like we were best friends forever. He wasn’t good academically, but no one could beat him in sports. He used to fight with boys, but with girls, he behaved well. He was a mixture of opposites.

A year passed by. This time, he made it, but our sections were different. Nevertheless, we used to talk in the break time, or play together like the good old times. I was his best friend. He was my crush. My first crush. His eyes still gave me the electric shocks. My cheeks still went hot.

It was during the end of that session that I began to feel guilty. Secretly, I felt that it was my fault that he had lost one year. My fault that his friends didn’t respect him much because he had failed. All my fault!

So, I prayed to God again to make things all right. To make others respect him for what he is, not look down upon him for what he couldn’t be. At the same time, I finally decided to confess my feelings to him. It had been three years, after all. Yet I was scared. What would people say seeing me running after a guy who had failed? But in the end, I did muster up enough courage to tell him. 

Session break got over and it was a new class. Taking a deep breath, I peered into my class…….he wasn’t there. I searched for him in the other sections too. He was nowhere. Petrified, I looked up for him in the junior class, in case he had…….no, he couldn’t have. I ran upstairs to the junior class. He wasn’t there either. I waited for him for a week. Then finally, one of his cousins said that he had left the school. He went away to a boarding school, which was more sport oriented than studies. He went away to a place where he was respected for what he is, not looked down upon for what he couldn’t be.

My wish came true once again. I was guilt free, yet horrifically sad. He was gone, forever. This crush continued for the next four years. I would always search for him in public places, just in case I got a glimpse. Four years later, my crush ended and so did the search.

Recently, I got a message from him in a social networking site. He still remembers me. I am still his close friend. And he still doesn’t know that he was my first crush.

Once there was a pair of eyes,
Eager eyes with truth and lies,
Eyes blazing with fiery fire,
Reflecting all the hope and desire.

Its one blink made me sink,
Caught me staring and gave a wink.
Suddenly my spine caught a chill,
My spirit jumped to the top of a hill.

But those eyes left long ago,
No chill, now life runs slow.
No one else has such eyes,
No eyes to make my spirit rise.

I miss many things in my life,
But never like I miss those eyes.
That gaze on me they’ll never lay,
The boy who had them has gone away.

Krisha M

krisha.arsenal@gmail.com

http://krishadreamz.blogspot.in/

TEARS AND RAIN

“I found peace in the depths of your love, now that you’re gone ,I live to pacify the storm within me.”

MUSIC.VODKA.CAR KEYS.

Three things that make a hopeless heart fly again, fly away from the pain and the hurt that silently devours it .She discovered them, just recently but the pain had been suffocating her since long. In the beginning it was more fierce now it just smouldered slowly.

Another lonely night,1500 kms away from home, another city , a new life in the place where she had first met him. She closed her eyes , took her car keys and banged out of her flat.

She was over him, done with her past or so she thought but on some nights like this one, everything just came flashing back . She had thought a lot of times to contact him, now that they were in the same place . It had been two years since she had broken up with him(which she did, not because she had stopped loving him but because it was the right thing to do) . Tonight was different though, she was thinking about him again and it pissed her off. Why did she always wonder about what could be rather than focussing on what was. So she decided to do what she had been wanting since she had shifted to this new place, call him up!

She wasn’t sure what the outcome would be , she just wanted to get rid of this ambiguousness that maimed her life. She somehow managed to recall his number and with a lot of courage, dialled it.

“They say that words have the power to destroy relationships, hence should be uttered carefully. If only you had used words coz the silence destroyed ME.”  

Three rings and his voice was followed by a chill that freezed her lips. She couldn’t utter a single word and cut the phone. Before she could think about what happened he called back. This time she gathered herself and said a faint hello, he asked her who she was and she freezed again. He had forgotten her.

He asked again and again and again. She cleared her throat but it was just an innuendo in vain. He had forgotten her for sure.

She said just a word,just one. Her name.The next thing she herd was the beeping of a disconnected phone.

She hadn’t expected this reaction, it caught her offguard. She messaged him, once and then again but he never replied leaving her staring at the message screen for long, blankly. She wasn’t angry, sad or much of anything. She was numb. She looked for her car keys since her answer to everything was RUNNING AWAY. Banged the door behind, started the engine, drove away in the silence that slowly began burning her. She drove past a wine and beer shop, next thing, she was drunk in the middle of the night with music that pierced her ears, driving. She stopped abruptly, pressed the bottle to her lips again,it burned her throat inside but still it was better than the ache she felt inside her hollow soul. After a few seconds of stillness it struck her. All the pain she had pretended she never felt, all the laughs she had faked, all the lonely nights, all the running away, every wound had been rubbed open again . All her strength was ripped in pieces, pieces she couldn’t and didn’t want to assemble. Tears scalded her cheeks, she screamed like she never had, it felt like someone had cut out a piece of her and poured alcohol on the bleeding wound.

It rained tears that night. It wasn’t only about him, she had controlled her emotions for a long time now trying to be strong through a lot of things, this incident just marked her saturation point.

Next morning she woke up in her bed, it was raining.Outside. Her head was heavy but she felt light. Atleast now she could let him go.

Pramati Anand

Hello

I said “Hello” to the thousand colourful lights that burst into the darkness. I forget if it was the night sky or my mind behind closed eyes. But anyway, the lights, they were there. I had not expected them, even though I had idly prayed for them. Do you know the feeling when you haven’t been sleeping well and you haven’t been eating and you feel too sad to even call it sadness, to talk about it, to think about it, when you get really tired, from within? And you feel so close to the universe, to the rhythm that makes the world go round, to places you never noticed before, to people you never knew? And the lights are those places and those people, and the colours are the shift of emotions on unknown faces. There is such a comfort in being unknown. All your suffering becomes a story, something unreal and sweet. Nothing is ugly anymore. Light as a feather, you fly on the cold night breeze, over cities and countries, quietly ob serving your own story unfolding in so many homes and so many faces. And it becomes alright. You don’t know what you’ll do when tomorrow comes. But you know you’ll do what the unknowns are doing and that is sure to work.

I don’t know where I’m going, but it’s the kind of time when you like to talk, you know. And I know you have nothing else to do. You’ll listen to anything to keep yourself from thinking, from being alone. Well, there was a time when I believed in only one half of the world. Light without darkness, love without selfishness, happiness without pain. And I believed in my uniqueness. And I believed life was about adding. Adding to yourself; adding love, esteem, experiences, money, wisdom. But life is a lot about subtraction too. Losing sense, innocence, love, scruples. But I still think it’s fair, it evens out, don’t you? And we’re not unique. I thought it would be an awful feeling, but it’s a little comforting. Just look at you, you look just like me. Your face turns from boredom to a slow sardonic smile, just like mine does. And that’s how the eyebrows go up, see. The same life-changing events are occurring in my ant-hill too. It&#039 ;s random. It doesn’t mean anything. We’re one of the bursts of light in a vast universe, momentarily meaningful, but unimportant between the millions of years gone by and the millions of years to come. Take comfort in the fact that whatever you do, it doesn’t affect anything. Not even yourself. There is great freedom for the unknowns. If you mess it up, some other unknown will get it right and it will be mathematically stable, it’s just a matter of odds, just a matter of probability.

What is it that you said? It doesn’t matter, I have your words in my throat and your voice in my brain. And I am possessive of my time when I talk. So well, there’s another thing I’d like to talk to you about. It’s something I don’t like about myself, something that scares me greatly. The thing is, my happiness, my well-being hugely depends on flesh and bones. There are a few well-known unknowns in my hill and I won’t survive without them. And you know very well, how fragile these unknowns, these bags of flesh and bones are. Fall off a flight of stairs, break your neck, poof! gone. It’s that simple. It makes sense to not care. Where one ant goes, thousands are born. But I can’t convince myself to stop caring. It makes me weak, eats into my freedom. It’s one thing to be unknown and free, it’s a wise compromise. But to be an unknown prisoner is not my cup of tea. And this caring ties me down when I fly off into the night sky, t o look at my story in your home. Was it the night sky or my mind behind eyes shut, I can’t recollect.

Rashmi Mishra

mona.rashmi@gmail.com

Yet Another Tirade :\

Hypocrisy surrounds me, I honestly do not know where to begin, my mind-set as of now being such that I am incapable to do anything other than just rant about a few people who have become experts in altering my mood in a record time.

Now, according to Wikipedia

“Education in its broadest, general sense is the means through which the aims and habits of a group of people lives on from one generation to the next. Generally, it occurs through any experience that has a formative effect on the way one thinks, feels, or acts. In its narrow, technical sense, education is the formal process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated

1. Knowledge
2. Skills
3. Customs

And values from one generation to another”.

Now some of us agree with this, well of course we do, but then there are some , who are alien to the above mentioned concept of education.

I am almost scared to use the word “education” here, because the people I am talking about are probably not even aware of what the word actually stands for.

It happened around two months ago , when the Christmas for the “intelligent” ones was about to start , in this case it more or less spelt doom when the marks that were, naturally as low as they could get, beckoned my parents to meet a buffoon of a man , who had always reminded me of this real cruel bear who had once eaten up a young kid in a zoo in Kolkata , but I was too much of a child to sympathize with the parents back then . Yeah! So this man who resembled that big bear spoke to my mother ( not exactly “spoke” , more or less was trying to tell MY mother MY life history :\) and assuming in his unbalanced frame of mind that he could remark on MY future based on HIS misplaced sense of EDUCATION.

It might be interesting to note, that this person’s idea of making us seventeen year olds study was to threaten us with extra school hours filled with the usual dreadful (for some of us) subjects of Physics, Chemistry, Maths etc. ; whose concept of fun was solving that murky NCERT mathematics textbooks twice till at least the more “brainy” (in his opinion) ended up acing an equally vapid examination. Well obviously I was not born to make such a horrid mistake so naturally my parent had to meet him and listen to him whining, complaining, putting me down in front of my own mother (who is and will always be a LOT more wiser than that miserable human specimen) telling her in not so much words just how my behavior could affect the non-existent “reputation “of the buildings where they assemble us and treat us like cattle, well of course the cattle is treated much more gently .

At this point I would definitely like to mention that even the not so wise Ministry of Human Resource Development of India defines education as this

“Education is fundamental to our all-round development, material and spiritual.

Nowhere is it mentioned that this particular brand of “education” as we call it , requires a hundred per cent attendance , or needs of us to be demure and in fear of those who have wrongly been elevated to the status of a teacher (This is for those who definitely do not deserve to be called so). Or slogging it off into the wee hours of the night following their concept of “hard-work” only to wake before the sun rays hit our windows just so we are in time to attend a misnomer of a “meditation” session ,while THEY would be strutting around the cement structure ready to punish those of us who do not “meditate”. Leave the concept of “teaching”, “learning”, these individuals I speak of, are making a mockery out of almost everything that follows a method in which the notion of “understanding” plays a large role. I strongly feel that Amnesty International should start a branch aimed for “The Victims of Education” though if I were expected to be really honest about this; it should be confined to a particular region of this country we live in. Arranging two hundred and fifty students on the basis of their merit simply exposes the dullness of the mind behind the particular idea. Schools as they should be called no longer teach in the place where I exist, they more or less threaten. Martin Luther King Jr. had once stated that “Intelligence plus character is the true goal of education”. I am sure these shepherds I have come to loathe so much agree but let me enlighten you on their definition of Intelligence and Character.

#1. As a student you have a good character IF you –

Are Demure
Are Silent
Are Dull

Show visible signs of fear when one of the shepherd makes a pitiable attempt to fool you.
Pretend to be the five year old obedient kid they expect you to be (I am not even sure if five year olds are that obedient any more)

Treat a member of the opposite gender in the same manner that a lawyer would treat an accused in the court. In fact I strongly feel they should give up on the idea of co-education and start convents instead, and go on preaching about that misplaced idea of sensibility they claim to possess.

Dress up like a nun or a priest (pick one)

#2. As a student you are INTELLIGENT IF you-
DO NOT Flunk any subject
Show a keen interest in few subjects
Write brilliantly on those papers they give you while they test your vomiting skills.

Also the idea that a student can learn something from a book that is not the usual uninspiring text book, instead a good piece of literature also does not seem to enter their brains (but then again the question arises if they possess the much needed grey matter?) They consider it to be their fundamental right to go around projecting any sort of an image they want to , of that of a student , irrespective of the fact whether they have actually interacted with any . Well obviously, to most of you, all of it would seem exaggerated but then it is not and I say it without any doubt. I for one am glad that my “school-life” is over. Having changed eight schools , there was none where I ever doubted my capability , not only me , I do not remember having any class mate who used to agonize over the teacher’s comments , you see it was so simple , they were teacher s , not some shepherds . Nor did any school bring any of ours morale down like this hell-hole of a place di d , maybe because they had “Educated” people, not some random individuals who assume it to be all right to declare in front of a parent that their child’s future would be nothing but getting married off and leading the life that they are leading now.

Now that I think of it, I would just go with Mark Twain and not let my schooling interfere with my education. Because that seems to be the only sensible option , for I would rather survive on a healthy dose of literature rather than seeing few people’s idea of “Knowledge” “Customs” “Skills” and “Values” to be passed on as a down rated version of true learning that students actually need.

manviparashar23@gmail.com

http://www.theatheistdreamer.com/ 

Tears of the River

Have you ever spent a day on the riverbank?

Everything so extraordinarily kaleidoscopic yet morphine-like that you wish you lived there forever within the tranquillity of the cavernous warm water – Away from all troubles that consume you – And once you remote yourself from the blue’s yet again you get captured by the ecstasy offered by the straddling forest wilderness.

Every night when the natives go to sleep, the pastels of the trees start dancing to the beats of the wild breeze. Witnessed in the glint of moonlight by the symbol of wisdom – Owls, is a legend bizarrely flamboyant.

Deep within the forest lays a throbbing fairytale of the unconquerable river! The river is ever-changing yet eternal. It receives everlasting youth from the raindrops!

Have you ever seen beneath the disturbing layer of ripples and the foam, the river flowing? The rocks and stone-clad hills strive to slow it down. It remains unstoppable, hitting numerous rocks! The youthful river battles against. The edges on the sides constrict her, sometimes narrow down the path, widen all of a sudden and make the river believe that its fate has already been written. The river refuses it; it crushes the edges in madness; suddenly the ripples and the foam look more lively and shimmery. The river keeps moving, it never gives in to any of the hurdles, and the path isn’t always smooth. The battle never ends. When will it reach its destination? When will the river be at peace?

Every night the river sobs in secrecy. The untamed branches tell a tale of the river’s heroic display. A tale of valour! The river silently listens, while its crystal white sand floor shines under the moon. ‘You’re indomitable’ says the Owl softly, and fly’s away to narrate the chronicles…

Priyansha Mistry

LU, Leicester

The Three Foolish Monkeys…

“See no evil, Hear no evil, Speak no evil”… In my opinion if Gandhiji were born in this era he would not have mentioned his three wise monkeys who sit and close their senses to all the evil around them, instead of fighting against the evil and standing up for themselves…

Sanhita Baruah

Assam Engineering College

http://sanhitabaruah9.blogspot.in/

The Whistleblower

For in shadows i can’t hide 
Can I?
And truth wouldn’t make me 
Immune in daylight.

For i saw tears and i cried
Can’t I?
And because hunger wasn’t being 
Subdued by might

Yet i was fine 
Was I?
Because sleep was 
Alluding me at night

And then i wondered what was right
Should I?
And yet as dark and grime
Was ruled by shimmering and bright

Dissolving in flames to ignite an aspiration
Can I?
And if they knew where was
Shadow and where was light…

Anirudh Kashyap

VIT