The Beginning of An End

Posted on January 18, 2014 by Guria
The irony of it was that it was I who heralded the beginning of the end. It was an end that was inevitable, written and rewritten hundreds and thousands of times before we had even existed. The path could have been anything but the end was staunch, unyielding and unmoving. The destiny only differed in the journey, in its inception towards its inescapable ending.
It was like flying off a cliff, willingly, for the thrill- the plummet, the fall that makes one rethink the whole boring definition of life. For that split second in time that lasts forever, imprinted indelibly in the deepest recesses of your soul. But it is only but a fraction of time in the hard, immovable reality- you could live your whole life in it- and then it’s gone. And suddenly you realize that the ground is coming closer and closer, opening up to greet you, faster and faster, gaining momentum with each lapse in time and you close your eyes against the predestined thud that was always there, even at the beginning, even in that infinitesimal and everlasting moment in time.
And the agony that you knew, you knew with extreme conviction, was just waiting to pounce on you. I will be ready for it when it comes, you had told yourself. But one can never be. Whenever it comes, be it now, be it tomorrow, be it in ten years from today or be it at the deathbed- it will always be too soon, always sudden, unexpected. And you will always be unprepared.
Against your deepest desires, against your wishful thinking, against your heartfelt prayers, the end will still be the same, even then.
And I tempted fate, challenged destiny. And the world at my feet broke apart.

P.S. It could also be the beginning of the realization of an old dream (you can guess what). I had this stowed away in some distant, forgotten corner of my hard drive, and now seemed like a good time to brush off the dust of it, and bring it out into the world. ~G.
Posted in Abstract, Catharsis, Chapters, Creations, People and Relationships, Philosophy, Soliloquy | 2 Comments

Back to You

Posted on January 8, 2014 by Guria
It’s been a while since I wrote in here,
I was too worried about heartbreak
To remember to care,
That the heart was breaking elsewhere.
Never occurred to the git
Submerged in her own selfish despair
All the while, while the happiness
Blinked, breathed and stuck through.
Right next to you.
I forgot about love,
The one that comes, holds and stays-
The one that whispers,
You are worth every bit and more
I am here, always and always, am I not?
I forgot about you,
The promise unconditional,
I forgot to remember
Why I never felt alone-
I forgot in my selfish adventure
The reason I was here.

P.S. Between the time changes, and the changing of continents, sometimes we forget those, the ones who have stuck through and through out with us, and even laughed, when we have taken them for granted from time to time. This is to one such person who holds my heart. Happy Anniversary, darling! ~ G.
Posted in Creations, Me, People and Relationships, The Other Side of the River, Verses, You | 6 Comments

102°F

Posted on November 1, 2013 by Guria
Tinkling shards of glasses
Strewn over the black asphalt
Gleaming red, as one catches
The moonbeam errant and bright
The scars shined black
Still dripping at the sides
The ache in the body
Manifested and magnified
The fever roared high and strong
As the body struggled to cope
With the mind in chaos
And the heart that broke
I am happy, or may be I am sad
Being human held no joy
Or may be it is just, that feeling too much
Today I have simply have gone mad
N.B. There’s a madness in me (as in everyone else) that I respect and fear. Unleashing it gives me a little respite from the burning. And fever tends to make my sensibilities get overridden, and it lets loose more easily. A couple of weeks earlier when this happened, it was the flu, apparently. Also, no punctuation marks- eloquence needed freedom- as did interpretation. G.
Posted in Creations, Darkness, Me, Verses | 8 Comments

Mistakes!

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Guria
Right thing is always not the nice thing
The wrong thing is rather tempting.

Make the mistakes, I say
Even when you know it’s one
You cannot know for sure
If it really really was such, unless
You have done and seen it beyond.

I’d stick to the not-so-right
Toeing the line,
Saying, it ain’t right
But no one said-
It all be wrong either.

So here I go-
Brushing shoulders with the Devil
Making deals that’s neva’ gonna hold
All for a joyride, a jump from the cliff
A path not taken, by the smart and the bold
All for learning,
As I hit rock bottom-
It was a mistake after all.

P.S. One episode of “How I Met Your Mother” inspired this one- Lily and Ted have this conversation about why to make mistake even though you know it’s a mistake, so that never in your life will you have to wonder whether it was actually going to be a mistake! Whew! All this weird not-really-a-poetry poetry keeps my blog and my on-and-off writing skills afloat. ~G.

Posted in Creations, Random | 2 Comments

Grey Skies

Posted on September 10, 2013 by Guria
The clouds gather, like warriors in steel,
Dark and dreary? All geared for battle!

I stop, to stare and wonder
Behold the dark and gloomy
The laden grey skies-
Of impending thunders,
Of lightnings, and powerful rains.
And wonder yet again,
The beauty the dull can bring-
Ne’er a brighter green,
Ne’er a more startling white,
Against the backdrop of grey
It is another one of those,
Another my kind of day!


P.S. It is a part of the ‘weird me’, that I love the grey skies, and every time it makes me happy- thinking of the rains it is going to bring. And that feeling I have that it is takes dull grey to make the world come alive, as it enhances in its own unique way every beautiful feature, every bright color, which the sun in all its glory, suffusing the world golden, cannot accomplish. Isn’t it on a dull grey day that you feel like lounging by your window and just staring beyond? 

Posted in Creations, Happy, Love, Me, Observer, Passions, Verses | 16 Comments

The Broken India

Posted on August 20, 2013 by Guria
Once upon a time there was a little girl who thought her country was the greatest in the world. She would argue and preen and proudly proclaim that she was proud to be born into that country. The country that was older than the oldest civilization (no matter what history books said!), steeped in beautiful traditions and rich culture that gave its people roots and gifted with ancient values that taught its folks to be better human beings.

Till one day she grew up and realized that her country was dying. Dying because all that she was proud of was slowing disappearing, vaporizing into nothingness. All because the sons and the daughters of the country had no backbone.

There was no truth left, no values, no morality- nothing that made them human anymore. They would fight and claw each other, steal what they could for themselves, hurt others when they cannot, lie, cheat, corrupt and even kill. All they understood was the ugly power that they could possess over others by raping, hitting, abusing or killing and of course, the scent of money.

Nothing was left behind of the richness that she associated with her country, all that she had read in books, or had fathomed her countrymen to be. The warmth, the care, the effusive spontaneity and love that she had seen in the people around her, were reduced to fear and cruelty.

From the other side, the grass did not glow green anymore. The lure of home still pulled at her but it scared her, what she would discover- what it had become. The grass had turned yellow in her sights, parched, dry and fading.

Once, she was angered when she had read these words by Winston Churchill,

“Power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues and freebooters. All Indian leaders will be of low calibre and men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles. A day would come when even air and water would be taxed.”

Today, she’s sad that in full consciousness, we made his words come true. The freedom for which our ancestors had laid down their lives- all to ensure that we were born into a free country- was a victory in vain. In their quest for a liberated future, they hadn’t known that it would be their sons and daughters who would destroy their country.
The Britishers may have enslaved us, but they had also made India a whole country. They had served as force against which we, irrespective of languages, religions, castes, color or region, had stood united once. Today, in our hands, it has started breaking up into pieces again, all the while refusing to stand up for itself to the world outside, or even protect its own, as foreign powers gnaw at it from all sides. We bicker, we fight, we duel amongst ourselves and we weaken from within. We cry in despair, we complain but we do nothing. Or we are scared and helpless to do anything.
And while we think of our beautiful country as it was, as it could be and then visualize the ruin that it is becoming, I wonder- after all, at the end of the day how many of us are Indians, and not what our mother tongue or our religion dictates us to be?
No one needs to bother about destroying India, we are doing a pretty good job ourselves.

P.S. For the first time in my life, painfully, August 15th meant nothing to me. Are we really free? -G.

Posted in India, Non-Fiction, Observer | 8 Comments

Heartache

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Guria
I know not, to want,
I know not, to ask,
Of dreams impossible
And the heart taken to task.
 
I try not to think,
Contemplate all the ways
That I could have belonged,
In another world, not so unreal.
 
I have learned how to love-
Not just love like a human
But to keep loving in pain,
The concoction that makes an Angel.*
 
Finally I can stop, stop and give up
Give up and still keep the hope.
And not think it a loss or an anguish
Or a victory for the heartless and the gone.
Finally I can love with nothing to want for,

I will be the better man- and be a woman.

* To Love is human. To feel Pain is human. Yet to still Love despite the Pain is pure Angel. -Rumi

Posted in Creations, Darkness, Life, Love, People and Relationships, Philosophy, Verses | 9 Comments

Catharsis XIII: Reflection

Posted on August 6, 2013 by Guria
   The funny thing is the last thing people think of the real me as (as opposed to the virtual me) is “despondently reflective”. I am famous (or infamous) amongst my cronies for my wicked sense of humor, a sharp wit and a sharper, scathing tongue (oh, how modest I am!). So, the poetries I churn out, that flow within moments from my being to my brain through my fingers out in to the world bewilder them. Is that anguish for real, does she hold so much inside, without saying it aloud, even while she’s laughing with the world?
    Difficult question. To ask. And to answer.
   Aren’t the funny people in the world those, who have pain hidden and resonating in the depths of their soul? I am not very funny by long measure but I do know how to make people laugh. Don’t we all laugh, so that no one will ever notice our tears?
     But a friend, one I have come to love over a period of time, asked me this. And I had to step back and think. Why, why was it so simple to create verses that others found beautiful but always symbolic of an aching heart when they thought of the one who was writing it? I owed my friend an answer as she was the one who asked about not when I wrote it, or how I wrote it but why I write it.
   And all I could think was, that I wasn’t any different or any better or worse than anyone around us. Everyone has desperation and pain within them. We learn to live with it. It is always there, bubbling away in the depth. Some days you smart with the throbbing awareness of it, and some days you don’t even realize that it is still alive within you. But sometimes when it spills over, and tends to overcome you- threatening to herald to the world the torment that you survive with, threatening to expose you to that unwanted and ugly pity- that we recede back into our shells. And, each in our own unique way, we deal with it away from the prying and questioning eyes of the world before we bounce back on to the stage, rejuvenated, refueled to take on the world with renewed vigor.
    For me, I write. And sometimes, I write funny too. But the pensive sadness is too easy, too tempting and so difficult to resist.
Posted in Catharsis, Creations, Me, Observer, People and Relationships, The Other Side of the River | 6 Comments

Betrayal

Posted on July 26, 2013 by Guria
Watch me as I die
Of hunger, thirst and lies
Of ignorance and indifference
And of rotten, shallow minds.

Watch me as I suffer
From hurt, strong and bitter,
From unwavering faith-
That all turns out better.

Watch me as I cry-
For souls lost, and dry
Of all who turned their backs
To love, joy and life!

Watch me as I walk away-
As I turn to stone
Inside, I harden- 
One day, when I’ll care no more. 

P.S. My 200th post on Maverick Misfit… Whew, that took a while! -G.

Posted in Creations, Darkness, Life, People and Relationships, Verses | 9 Comments

Desperation

Posted on July 8, 2013 by Guria
The glorious view had ceased to be soothing
The fragrances reeked of despair and doom
There was nothing in the abundance
Nothing to behold…
All was lost,
While I stood amidst the rejoicing crowd.
Happiness turned sour 
That ached with the pain of laughter
I heard screams in the shouts of joy
I could smell the advent of death
All among the celebration of life
And I could feel dying inside
All the while the smile 
Remained plastered outside.

Posted in Creations, Darkness, Loss, Verses | 7 Comments