Reading and Living Sans Destination !

These vacations of 2013 are turning out to be really special for some really beautiful moments. I used to be a pretty nice reader of novels and poetry till 2011. Obviously the best time for a disciplined student to catch up rigorous reading is summer vacations as during this time you are free of any word like ‘syllabus’ torturing the terribly realist part of your brain. So the last novel I enjoyed in summers was the god of small things by Arundhati Roy straight two years back.

For past two years life involved me in something which partially only the architects, civil engineer or some interior decorator can understand where you design, build up and decorate houses, projects, hotels, cities, parks etc. with a perfect plan and the other half can be understood by those who live away from their family and end up surviving in some natural disaster or I should say the destiny’s disaster. Anyways what I mean in this post is that I was simply separated from the passion of reading in summers.

After redesigning and completing the construction of my life to come back to basics, to my astonishment destiny started helping me with interior decoration and things started falling at place. Few weeks ago I didn’t know about the play “sans destination” and neither its awesome author Nikhil Sharda. But now I know both and knowing both is a pleasure, a lesson, a smile, motivation and some respectable tears.  

After watching the rom-com crazy stupid love I was waiting for my father who very soon came up with the book (which my sister ordered for me as my advance birthday gift) along with chocolates for me and my brother, yes he shows his love for me with chocolates, he must have enquired the book by reading it a bit.. While giving it to me he said it is written in it that one can say himself an economist if he teaches economics, a physicist if he is into physics but one usually doesn’t says himself a philosopher if he teaches philosophy. With a subtle smile he exclaimed how true! And whole heartedly Okayed the play for his daughter’s reading...

I started reading it then and there forgetting that I was about to try the new dress my mom got for me (I have still not tried it). As it is a short play I completed it within a couple of hours. A humorous trance was what I felt after reading it. Lying at my bed was just thinking about the play and the smartness and relief of being philosophically logical, adorable and admirable. Unbelievably I could construct the play in my mind like I never did to any play before be it Julius Cesar, Christmas carol when I was 16 or the little mimic which I read in 5^th standard! And I am sure that all the readers can easily connect to it because we all have travelled at least once in train. I could manage to live the play a bit more because my life changing journey too was New Delhi to Varanasi.  The essence of the reality is so beautifully portrayed via a train journey in this play.   

We are so sure about where we want to go, that surety is a fact not the truth. The surety of destination is what we are working upon, struggling about and are appreciated for but no that surety is not always complete. Destiny has some authority over our destinations!

Well after reading it I posted my review about the book

“Journey is a great metaphor of life! Sans destination confirms this in the perfect stylish manner possible. Full of humor, targeted sarcasms, believable exaggerations and absolutely convincing philosophies this play is all about two things- Reality and the writer’s extraordinary capability to present it in such an entertaining manner. A play which makes the reader to accept all the characters without being judgmental as they are the part of our own life or journeys and a play which so marvelously means its title – sans destination!  “

Evening all went in being nostalgic, revaluating my life and smiling alone for some awesome humor and elements of philosophy in the play and finally I felt the same calm and peaceful feeling of reading in summer vacations!!

P.S— Now every journey will remind me about this play! you can buy it from http://pothi.com/pothi/book/nikhil-sharda-sans-destination
 

A POEM i felt like preserving!

Sohrab Sepehri: In The Meadow

The turfs of such vastness;
The mounts of such heights;
... The meadow is engulfed by the fresh scent of the grass.

In that remote parish,
I was looking for something,
Maybe a dream, perhaps a fistful of sands,
Or a lightening, a smile,
Yes, something:
A fleeting trance
at least.

Behind the willows,
There is an innocent sense
-made of oblivion and of original void-
It is constantly calling my name.

I stay besides the reeds,
And I listen;
But,
Who is talking to me?
Who is calling my name?

**&**

A lizard slipped into the river,
I leave.
Ryes on my way.
Then it comes the green sight of the farms,
And forgetfulness that stream in the air...


**&**

I stay by the waterway,
I ousted my shoes, feet in the torrent:
Oh, so green I feel at this moment!
And so fluid, so sharp all my senses are!
So aware!
**&**

Who is behind the trees?
No one, only a lonely cow!



It is the noon,
-of a warm summer day-
Even the shadows know the name of the season.
The shadows are spotless and dense.
And in my bright, tidy space,
all the children of sense
Sometimes play, sometimes rest.

**&**

Life is not empty:
There is kindness,
And there is apple
and there is faith.

Life is full,
wherever flowers dare to bloom...
It is true, so true:
Till the last tulip
Life goes on worthwhile.


And now,
Now,
There is something in my heart;
And I am so restless,
Restless like a storm:
I like to run till the end of this perish
to the summit of this mount;
to the end of the perish-
summit of the mounts!

**&**

Faraway,
There is a Voice.
The Voice
is constantly calling my name.

A DULL AFTERNOON!

It’s a mid may afternoon. Like an inaudible anger it is sweeping this date. It’s like a tired dreading labor looking for his lover and her comforting touch but is sustaining his work with half dead will. Forgetting the enthusiasm of the morning this afternoon is sure that no history can be created today.

Sun is having a lot to deliver yet. Wind is hot enough to shut the windows and put the curtains on. Music is doing much little today then expectations.

Twinges of nostalgia in between are working as bit of escape. There used to be a time when heart had such springs in blood that no summer noon was a disturbance. That springtide was eternal but time went lot back in past.

Seems like nothing can be started and accomplished this noon. If sleeping is not an option available then just wait for the evening like I am doing.

A moment and a pond!

I sit silently by the side of a pond and look at the serenity of water. I have some issues with human voice! The way it twists the music of nature is unpleasant!

So! All those moments when I pick silence in a soothing splendor of Mother Nature! I feel an eternal reflection which settles in me forever!

A NIGHT TO VARANASI!

I fancied so much about train and rain both together sharing my equal courtesy! Varanasi came in my life making this fascination true! A random whack of fortune it was and irony being that it was a compulsion too!

That legally debauched arrangement of seat by feeding TC, I noticed Delhi fading in front of my eyes. It diluted and dissolved in the speed of train I remember Shiv Ganga express travelling through that dark night, dark trees, dark sky, dark nostalgia and dark dilemmas. I was feeling the adventure of anxieties in me. It was a silence, a bleakness, breathe taking fear of accepting the defeat of dreams! A compulsion of starting all new. It felt like I have been given an ultimatum to vacate my house by next morning and I just have this night left to pack up. Yes! I felt like vacating myself. It felt like a good bye to me! I had no one in my stories and memories that night. All was I! Everything was me. My versions of world, people, truth and life, I did not allow any interference. Accepted everything what everyone said, rejected everything what everyone said.

My sister slept and it came as a relief, I was relaxed for imagining tears now but they too were not attractive.

Wind was all at my face, making me lose every time when I wagered her if she could make me blink. I was tired to the extent that sleep too was not attractive. My inner revolt was going on silently making every possible destruction to me. I do not know what I needed! Perhaps only and only my mother and her lap.

**

 It started raining! a smile came from somewhere! That same smile when I got drenched in rain with my friends in IP College.  The same smile when I did walks in rain from anywhere to anywhere, the smile when I wrote poems on rain, when I bunked classes for rain, when I spoiled my exams because it was raining outside , when I made tea and pakode for my family, when I smiled for rainbows, when I did not sleep for rain, when I tried drinking it, when I photographed her , when i lost my sleepers in heap of mud during heavy rain and walked naked feet, when we made boat in childhood. That smile! Which came to me every time whenever it rained.

Rain is my elixir it is my salvation. It makes me believe, accept and make things right. This splendid symphony of nature is my strength.

It kept raining, I slept for couple of hours and then there was dawn!

A morning! Which gave me my first encounter with Varanasi.

I do not know what is the measurement for the intensity of feelings, success, and failure.

What matters is! RAIN.

Life should be wrapped in rain! In beauty.

P.S- As I am typing this post for my blog after so long, its raining heavily and I am up with THAT SMILE!