sanarao.wordpress.com

abandoning and moving with bag and baggage

to 

sanarao.wordpress.com

The West Indies

In order to be sane,

we should stay on different continents.

As the distance decreases,

sanity lifts up her skirt, and exits, as though escaping

to more pliable dwellings.

And so, for further references

if you find me delirious,

go away to Europe, Africa,

or better still go to the West Indies.

Pahasu House

An eyelash, drifts through the stripes of dust and gold that

a window, fourteen feet high, once threw on my old bed.

The arches of my ancestral home, still bent low with mourning,

and the loss of ninety three or so years of service to a pearl bearded man.

The room now lies bare, and dusty,

that eyelash has settled in the clockwork of that old winding table clock, with a radium dial.

Someday perhaps, in a sunday antique market,

the eyelash, will be released again,

lumbering with it an outdated wish.

The Obligation to be Happy by Linda Pastan

It is more onerous
than the rites of beauty
or housework, harder than love.
But you expect it of me casually,
the way you expect the sun
to come up, not in spite of rain
or clouds but because of them.


And so I smile, as if my own fidelity
to sadness were a hidden vice—
that downward tug on my mouth,
my old suspicion that health
and love are brief irrelevancies,
no more than laughter in the warm dark
strangled at dawn.

Happiness. I try to hoist it
on my narrow shoulders again—
a knapsack heavy with gold coins.
I stumble around the house,
bump into things.
Only Midas himself
would understand.

Why does death endear instantly,
a person, that my entire childhood has run away from?
Why do i now think of a billions things i could have learned from him,
and a million stories he could've told?
just when he has gone?

The person who made my father from his being,

Did i do justice to his story, by never even giving it a chance?
was it the 70 odd years that stood monolithic?
or that one impulse of a remark?

Acrid yesterday

Having thought myself a good person always, 

i am dumbfounded when someone points out the contrary

when the ghost of the one thing I have disliked in people, has emerged from within me,

and made a permanent residence in my nerves and sinews,

I wonder now, how could i not know when this absolute possession happened?

and how is it now that i should throw this tiresome and acrid tenant out?

Of sepia moments

When i make friends with a person, i like to keep discovering newness in them, the same people i have grown to know so well;

A couple of years ago, a batch mate with much command, ordered everyone to get their baby pictures while coming back from vacation, and in that whole process of oooh and aaahhs and pictures being circulated and flicked by random admirers, some were as it seemed lost forever in the banter and confusion. 

With no negatives to make copies from, it seemed like a part of some peoples past was taken away. 

Now that everyone has packed for the last time and sent trunks and trunks home, many have found some pictures of unknown babies.

I got a chance to look at pictures of two such people recently,

both good friends. Having always wondered where a certain personality trait came from, this seemed like a possible answer to many musings, a kid in the class photograph grinning with his front teeth missing, another little one hiding while others burst crackers;

What if these were some moments which made them a certain character, and slyly i feel like an illegal entrant to past of the people who don't know that I know.

Pictures have a way of throwing an entirely different age and time on you, little does it matter, if it is some one i know in the picture or someone i don't.

Did the fact that your mother made you wear your sisters frock, make you the fiery individualist that you are? Why do you stand apart from the group, so rigid and lonesome in all your pictures? Did i just take a peek into a part of you that is obscured by years of reading P.G Wodehouse?

Corrode

Now there is a ruin in sight,

one can smell, the decay, the hope

forming an overwhelming odor which now clings

in to sun-bleached clothes, is woven with the weave,

settles as grime in hair

Irrespective of personal hygiene

some traces will remain

and craft themselves as anonymous stories

to be told to one time acquaintances,

and little children who cannot comprehend.

Soneto V

Escrito está en mi alma vuestro gesto
y cuanto yo escribir de vos deseo:
vos sola lo escribistes; yo lo leo
tan solo que aun de vos me guardo en esto.

En esto estoy y estaré siempre puesto,
que aunque no cabe en mí cuanto en vos veo,
de tanto bien lo que no entiendo creo,
tomando ya la fe por presupuesto.

Yo no nací sino para quereros;
mi alma os ha cortado a su medida;
por hábito del alma misma os quiero;

cuanto tengo confieso yo deberos;
por vos nací, por vos tengo la vida,
por vos he de morir, y por vos muero.

Garcilaso de la Vega, Spain 1503-1536

"Not all those who wander are lost.”  

J. R. R. Tolkien

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers.

M. Scott Peck

The most I can do for my friend is simply to be his friend. I have no wealth to bestow on him. If he knows that I am happy in loving him, he will want no other reward. Is not friendship divine in this?

Henry David Thoreau

The most important things are the hardest things to say. 

they are the things you get ashamed of , because words diminish them - words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out...

the most important things lie too close to whereever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away.

and you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it.

that's the worst...

when the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.

From Stephen King's 'The Body'

october monsoon

The air heavy with moisture, stands still in its place,

while i try to speak, it stands in the way,

last night something went missing,

the air is now toying with the idea of it,

what will happen to the shapeless hole that is left behind,

will it get filled with the water that rains later?

When we two are parted

When we two are parted

In silence and tears,

Half broken-hearted,

To sever for years,

Pale grew thy cheek and cold,

Colder thy kiss;

Truly that hour foretold

Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning

Sank chill on my brow

It felt like the warning

Of what I feel now.

Thy vows are all broken,

And light is thy fame:

I hear thy name spoken,

And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,

A knell to mine ear;

A shudder comes o'er me

Why wert thou so dear?

They know not I knew thee,

Who knew thee too well:

Long, long shall I rue thee

Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met

In silence I grieve

That thy heart could forget,

Thy spirit deceive.

If I should meet thee

After long years,

How should I greet thee?

With silence and tears

Lord Byron

having less to say, i know now
is not a bad thing,
for it means having less going on in the mind.

After Years of Listening, A Stone Comes to Life

After years of listening, a stone comes to life,
and the candle in the tiny grass;
and the night, like a wife, comes home;
a feather, in this touch of wind, flies back
to the lost bird, and everything I do not know
begins to sway at once.

I love these nights of irresistible somnambulance!
These nights when the wind blows its lullabye
to each lonely wing; I love this old body I walk in,
I love this dependable sage, this desert scent
I sink into when I rest; and suddenly I know
I will no longer apologize for loving you.

I whispered your name and the wind whinnied back.
All the horses of heaven are in the pasture tonight.

--- James Tipton

"Fall not in love, therefore; it will stick to your face."

National Lampoon

 "The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us."

Paul Valery