The Road to Perdition

I walked with eyes closed
Blind, blinded, blind.
I walked with eyes opened.
My mind opened, light came in…
I walk with eyes open, to see
That I walk on the road to perdition.

Mind, the only light
That I can see in my sight
Words of wisdom from the child’s mouth
My sanity saved, my only respite.
One mind, standing alone
Pure and light, no sins to atone
Ha! Can it thus be? Perdition chases…
My name, carved on the headstone.

What games of dice put me on this path?
What fates? What chances? What play of what gods?
I do not know if the fates put me here
But I do know the feet that walk here
Walking willingly on the walls of fire,
Are mine.

I may be right.
But I have wrongly asserted
My right to be right.
Writing my own destiny
Signing my own death sentence
I walk to perdition.

My only god is my truth.
And seeking her, and finding naught but her…
The truth that you whisper like fearful lies
I cannot ignore, I cannot betray
Without selling my soul.
For when I found her, she did say
“Protect me from the cold world
With the warm blanket of thy soul”
For daring to stand by my truth
Cast me into hell,
And I shall go willingly.
My truths don’t lie,
My gods don’t cry.
On the road to perdition, ever onward.

“Are you a genius, to burn, to burn?”
“Are you so great, to turn martyr?”
No blazing star am I
Not the fire of the earth’s insides
My passion freezes before the passions of the world
And I am no fireball.
Just a flicker of fire
In the conflagration
Just a sliver of flame
Wanting to be one with the whole,
To be true to my soul
I know no shame
Guilt? Who is he?
Content, should I be?
To do without my craving, my lust?
To crawl on the earth and sear her dust?
Flouting the rules, reversing the laws
My price is eternal damnation
Which I shall pay with a smile.

Timid eagles around me
Earth bound, afraid to soar.
I jump, and leap
And yearn to fly.
Flouting your rules of modesty
My feet stand on the earth
But my eyes look to the sky!
One eye looks up when the others look down?
Scarlet sin. I should atone.
Oh, I am on the road to perdition.

When I look at thee, my world
I want to see me in you.
I love myself
And I want to love you.
I smile into your eyes
And all I see are stony veils of vulnerability.
When we journey with truth, my world,
We do not travel veiled.
When we converse with the rain, world
We do not cover our heads
And we stand in his glare, full in the face
We say, “You are my sun and I am thy radiance.”
Does it shame you to see me flaunt my nakedness?
Does my ease with my truth make you insecure?
My apologies.
I shall not linger, I shall go
Off on the road to perdition.

I expected to worship you
I expected to trust you
For I saw my gods in you
Expect, of me, I can
But of you? Even of my me in your you?
My mistake, to expect sanctity in sanctimony.
My mistake, to call you forth to display my gods
My mistake, to prick your little egos
My mistake, to show you that beauty exists.
My horrendous mistake, to tempt the blind men
With the scenes I can see
And the deaf men.
With hints of the sweetest music.
Forgive me, my dear world…
I am lost in my beauty, that
I forget that you need eyes to see and ears to hear.
pIf it pleases you, punish me, world,
I shall atone.
And I walk to hell.

Living the abstract in the concrete?
Making concretes of the abstracts?
Trying to realize the abstracts?
What world is this? What work is this? What soul stirring beauty is this?
Light from a thousand suns, darkness of a thousand moonless nights
Crushes me with its love, tortures me on the rack.
“Concretes are not real, we live in our minds” – I say
“I don’t have a mind, are you saying I am not alive?” -You say
What shall I say? -Nothing
For the road to perdition is fraught with the echoes of silence.

Life, my dear, is not a scrapbook of memories
That functions as an opium syringe
Nor is it a rocking precipice
Designed to fling me down.
Life is not a chase story for happiness
Nor is it the beds of suffering.
Life just is, life, to be, to be
And all I say, is, let me be…
And I am.
I am on the road to perdition!

My face, I look
In the mirror
My eyes, I face
Without fear
Intransigence?
Recalcitrance?
Sedition?
So be it.
On the road to perdition
My eyes scream my battle cry to me.

I am all alone
In the noonday sun
With not even my shadow to keep me company
Walking alone, on the road to perdition
Welcoming hell, fire, brimstones and devilled prongs
With open arms
And a frank smile
Of trust.

~Suchitra
02.02.2008

One full circle

When my eyes meet the cobwebbed ceiling
I realise I have come
One full circle.

This time is not that
This person is not that
The emotion, however, recalls
The past
And I realise I am a full circle done.

New places, new faces
New lots, new thoughts
I am where I begun
One step higher…the spring winds.

“Life moves on” they said
And true enough, it does
Or does it?
Does life move on
Or do I do?
Move on?
Or move away?
I muse
And lose.

Same words, read
Different thoughts, spread
Newer meanings, ascribed
Finer logic, applied
Secret smiles, shared
Stolen secrets, bared.

One full circle,
And I am done.

Drowned in melancholy,
Flushed with happiness.

Eyes in flight

The flight of eyes
Across mirages of lies
Senses in a snare
Scents and scenes aware
Tied up blue and red
Tears of joy shed
Seething tempers tear
Setting suns aflare
Thirty days of dream
Split across the seam
Eyes, brown and brown
Breaking into smile and frown
Muses, aplenty
Music, indemnity
Lives, red and dead
Living, a golden thread.

From the top of the lighthouse

I am the light
That shines in a stream
Across the sands of the beach,
Making the grains glimmer.
Running in circles
I shine on, to penetrate
To the end of the endless sky
Till the depths of the ocean’s profundity.
From the heights of the clouds
To the heads in the crowds
I look, I peek, I search, I seek.
My circles, they seem eternal;
I seek their culmination.
Myself, I seem shallow
I seek my depth.

Looking beyond me
To find myself;
Looking into the heart of the city
And the crests of the waves…
I guide the sailor on the mast.
The city that sleeps, I awake
In the prelude to dawn.
I look at thee, to find me
You look at me, and find you!
My search, unto me,
Yet my light, you see.
Call me a ‘beacon’, you do
For I have shown your way to you
Your security, I secure
While my lack of it, I endure.

Fear

I am the mother of all my fear.

From the old mercy of my childhood, when I did not know that I was born to be fear-less, I aspired for fearing fear. My dear fear, did you not come from me? Did I not make it a matter of choice by inviting you to my bosom and nursing you with the goodness of me? Do I not cater to your every whim, do I not laugh at your cajoling coos that turn me into spools of strandy thread around the sticky singleness of your little finger? Do I not know that I made you, you, and yet let you make me, me? Do I not let you hold your reigns over my head and rule me with your iron handled whips?

Hence, fear, you are my child.

Today, I realize that I have fed you to your lip smacking brim, and sung you your songs of sleep to make you drowsy. I see you rubbing your little eyes, with their petal like lids, with your little fingers and thumb, the same little thumb that you rule me under. I lift you, kiss you twice, once on each cheek, and put you on my chest. Your head is on my shoulder, cradled under my ear, and your little thumb comes to your mouth from under my arm where you suckle it lovingly, sleep coming on slowly to claim you for her own.

And I sing my lullabies, cradling you to sleep, walking with you, back and forth, across this balcony with its distant view of the mountain and sea, the last lights of the sun leaving a lasting imprint on the face of the white, bright moon.

And finally, when you are silenced, when your incessant demands are being satisfied and sated in the dreams of your sleep, I lay you to bed on the feathery whiteness of my sheets, and preserve the integrity of your sleep and the smile you transport here from dreamland, with my own clothes covering you.

Having quelled fear with love and security, I can safely say that I am indeed the mother of all my fear.

A conversation, with truth

The dialogue: (19.12.2007)

“…”

“…”

“Should I begin, or will you?”

“Does it matter?”

“…”

“Where were you all this while?”

“Don’t you know?”

“I guess I do. I am sorry, I have a habit of asking questions that I know the answers to.”

“Why?”

“Affirmation”

“Affirmation of you?”

“No, affirmation of you.”

“…”

“…”

“Were you searching for me?”

“I was.”

“Why?”

“Why does any search take place?”

“Because there is a need for it.”

“That’s why.”

“Why do you need me?”

“Because you are you and I am I.”

“Are you for real?”

“I am as real as you are.”

“How true are you?”

“How true are you?”

“As true as you are.”

*Deep throated laugh*

“What is you, but me?”

“I know.”

“…”

“Are you a solid, liquid or gas?”

“I am human.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I don’t. But that does not change what I am, does it?”

“How clever. You tell me you change, and then you tell me you do not change. What are you?”

“Why are you so eager to know what I am?”

“…”

“Can you digest it, my dear, if I tell you I don’t exist?”

“I don’t believe you.”

“See? You are endorsing it yourself.”

“…”

*smile*

“Then, it was all a lie? My search? The promise? The knowledge? The endless hours of patience? My stoking the hopes, knowing that I will reach you someday…”

“Haven’t you? ‘What is you, but me?’ “

“I thought I understood. I am not so sure now.”

“You have always understood. You now know that you have understood. How? Because I am telling you so, that’s how. Now all that’s left for you is to understand that.”

“I can’t feel.”

“Do you want to feel?”

“I do. I do not want to think my thoughts, but I want to feel them with the completeness understanding bestows on them.”

“And you are not able to?”

“I am not able to.”

“Why?”

“Because I have still not understood you.”

*laugh*

“Why?”

“I laugh for you.”

“Because of my predicament?”

“Because you are a fool. Because you lack the wisdom to know your knowledge.”

“I know that. I told you.”

“Yet you do not understand me.”

“I don’t. And that…that is the truth.”

“My dear, you don’t deserve to.”

“I’m crying.”

“Thwarted hopes? Failure makes the baby cry?”

“No, it’s just that I don’t know where I went wrong. I wanted you, wanted you with all my heart and mind and soul and living consciousness. I toiled for you. And now, when I have everything…”

“Did you want me? If that was what you wanted, why are you ignoring me, sitting in front of you? What are you chasing?”

“I don’t know.”

“…”

*Pregnant pauses, expectant silences*

The monologue: (12.01.2008)

My dear truth,

This is between you and me.

If ’tis is between you and me, why do I write, why do I showcase you in the words from my mind, why do I embalm you in the smothering folds of my language, why do I dress you up like a prized doll and display you to the other minds that shall stray along my path?

I do not answer thee, you know the answer, and you smile secretly at me. I see thy smile, and my heart bursts into a thousand raptures of delight. I know not the words of the song that shall express my delight, nor does my voice comply in warbling the tunes in which thy full form is revealed. My delight is bigger than thee, and thou, thou art bigger than me. I know the snakes run tying to catch their own tails, but that is thy nature, and I laugh, laugh, laugh at thee, with thee.

I am still not sure if I should address you like that dear friend of mine is called, in those mocking tones of ‘you’, claiming possession, stamping my presence on you, telling myself at every utterence of your name that I know you, that I have spoken, conversed, eaten and drunk with you, that you have seen me at my best moments and worst, that I have hit you with a pillow, and you have teased me mercilessly, that I have argued your truth, and you have questioned my existence, attacking the very foundations of whatever it is that we are, and that I have comforted you, and you have allayed my fears, celebrating yourself, my ‘I’ and that strange chemical reaction that makes, not new products, but old ones finer.

Or whether I should worship ‘thee’ like the men worship their gods, with reverence, with devotion, with the same tears that every glance at thy presence brings to my eyes, the tears that the very fact of existence of an entity like you is sure to bring up to my eyelids and freely down in my cheeks in belief, credulity, wonder and awe. Whether I should exalt thee by song and word and lyric, whether I should work with thee, work my way through thee, every day, every night, working to be with thee, working as the only way to be with thee. Whether I should request my flowers to adorn thee, my birds to sing for thee, my sun to shine for thee, my men to open their eyes and see thee. Whether I should let thee in all of them come alive. And watch on, silently, silently, silently.

The truth (?!) is that you are neither this nor that, you are not to be pigeonholed and docketed into a folder, for you are the very essence that makes up the folders. Not my mother, nor my father, not my friend, not my sibling, not the love of my life, not the teacher I revere, not the child that I bear, no relation, none. You are closer, closer than all this. What is one’s relationship to oneself? You stay that to me. And from thee, comes every bond that there exists.

Where do I see me? Wherever I go, whatever I do. Where do I see thee? I see naught but thee.

If you and I are as inseparable as the flower and its fragrance, then how is it that I see you, sitting there, out of me, without, and watching me work? That’s the beauty of it, you gave me, me, you come from me, you are me. Within, without, the interface, it is all you. And my truth, when you are all that there is, how could I ignore thy existence? How could I say you are not there? For you do not ask for belief. You do not ask to be believed, any more than the tiger’s claws that threaten the sleeping child or the drops of water sating the thirsty man’s quest to be quenched, ask to be examined with belief, faith or reason.

Truth in the earth, truth in the windowpanes that came from the earth, truth in fire, truth in the sun’s heat that sears through me, truth in the shadowy greens, truth in the winds that carry my messages, truth in the truth, truth, truth, everywhere!

Omnipresence?

Is it you that my men carve in stone, paint with their gilded colours, carry in their hearts, sleeves and wear as printed words on their T shirts? Is it you that they say they revere when they paint images of how they think you are on calenders and candy wrappers alike? Is it you that they love to dress up like the little girls’ dolls? Or is it you that they pour buckets of their, their produce on, milk and butter and curd and whatnot, showering you with incense sticks and wine and wafer? Is it thee that they house in stone and sculpture and transmute into music and immortalise in architecture? Is it you that they praise in word and song? They love thee, don’t they?

I am smiling.

I cannot contrast, I cannot compare, I cannot censure, nor can I copy.

I can only be.

And with that, I rest my case. Let silence reign next.

The fireworks

After the sun has long set
Over the browns on the earth, in the west
New suns rise at midnight
Old wine in older bottles, tripe and trite
Bikes whizz and bars quake
Their human joy, I’ll give you, not a farce or fake.
Oh, the glasses clink in the birth of cheer
But wherefrom the cheer births, if it were not here?

He stands on the bridge, holding hands aloft
His worries blowing with the night winds awaft
“Time to let go, time to move on
Time to bid adieu to the foregone
New age, new times, new beginnings, new dawn
Setting my face forever, against things bygone”
Oh, your pencils and rulers do their jobs well,
But the bottled parts of thee, how their fizz thee quell?

She sets up a notebook, an arithmetic exercise
Filtered tobacco sticks meeting a sad demise
Shiny new jogging shoes, bought on the sale
The nightly drink, tonight, looks ever so pale
Alarm clocks wound up to meet the sun
Daily knocks to its poor head, my resolutions undone
Oh, powerless me, the day directs my life,
And I search on for meaning amidst sorrow and strife!

Hope, hope, hope spurs me on
My belief in belief not yet gone
“The day tomorrow will be fair”
For unto the end, it’s my days, and I care
I am in love with life, mine
And exalt her purity, all so pristine
Oh, when my only need is to integrate
Why do I look in, out, beyond, to castrate, to berate?

I trip, I tease,
I strip, I fleece.
I search, I run
I besmirch, my heaven.
Wants, many
Everything I want, within me
Existence of existence, written in my name…
And yet I seek it outside, refuting my claim!

I pull my time apart
And divide it into units, quart by quart
To keep my time, mine, I do
But I end up giving it to you.
My time, going, going, gone…with a blast
Like the fireworks, it does not last
When my fire is but wet embers, and my work an excuse,
How can the fireworks, me, my life, amuse?

The years, they add onward
Birthdays, deathdays, anniversaries incurred
Totalled up, a balance sheet
And before I can look, life gone a-fleet!
The years, the peaks, scratching the sky
Counting the peaks, I forget to fly.
Poetry, written with love, scratched out in shame…
Resurruction, my will, anybody game?

The run

I flee through the plains, that I not see, and through the peoples, who see not my face. I smile, I dance, I wave my arms in pleasantries and greetings and acknowledgement of acquaintances. Yet, I flee, I flee the noise, I flee the frightening, bewildering silences which come tagged with no meaning. I search for meaning, not in them, not in them who gave me the phrases, but in me who reads them, and when I find that I know not the meaning, I find not the meaning, I flee from my head, I flee from me.

I knock, hoping I will be called in, hoping to be called in, hoping I shall want to go in. I am welcomed with open arms in each house I stop at. Yet, my feet have scarcely crossed the threshold before the winds speak to me, and I get ready to flee. I turn my head, I cross the threshold bending my head, turning it back but once in the torturous smiles of a farewell without reason. I walk on down the dusty paths, my mind seldom at rest, imagining the unseen interiors of all the houses I have ever wished to set foot into, the houses which bade me in, imagining, too, happy hours of placidity…a serenity of a kind I have made it my business to seek, inside those very houses. Each thought of that wispy foamy cloud that I see myself as, spurs me on faster, as I run away from it, as I run, run, run on.

“Art thou happy?” they ask.

“Of course, is there a doubt? I’m happy. Am always so.” I aver.

The smile of my face reassures them, and the walk away, with a lingering look at my happy face, reassured of doubts, doubts reassured. The moment their heads turn, I run with all my might in the opposite direction, my smile my only companion, the tears running as dry streams down my cheeks, without reason, without reason.

I run blindly, my eyes closed to the darkness of moonless nights. I do not know whether I run to, or I run from, but I do know that I am running, and I’m running. I ask myself more questions than I know the answers to, I find that I have all the answers I shall ever need. I twist and bend and contort my face in the avid concentration of trying to seek and seeking to find. And then, I find that I am running. I run, like there is no tomorrow that I shall run to. I run, like I am running away from death. I run, like I am running impatiently into the waiting arms of death. I run.

One day, a beautiful face makes me stop. I pant, my thirst overcoming me, and without hesitation I beg her for water. The sparkling liquid drops only have to go into my mouth, when I pinch myself awake, and run on.

The water was too sweet.

I do not dare look back, lest I see the sweetness of her water mingling with the caustic saltiness of her water. Lest I want to run back.

I run.

I run through the forests of hell, I run through the mountains of heaven. I stop not, I ask nothing. No home I have, no work I do, I run, I run, I run. I run sometimes with hands holding mine, I run sometimes with hands feeding me, I run sometimes with voices begging me to stop, I run sometimes with feet keeping pace with mine. But no matter, I run, I outrun all of them, like the hare, like the monkey, like the cheetah, I run.

One morning, I was called to the alter, and the woman placed a living model of me into my hands. “She’s yours.” she said.

Pride as I have never known overflowed from the depths of me, and ran all over her serene face. I had tried to outrun her, but she had found me nevertheless. “Not mine, she cannot be, she should not be” I declared, and handed back my bundle of me into the hands and without a backward glance or a tear expended, I ran on.

I ran from the mother who bore me, I ran because she ran. I ran from the father who adored me, I run, because he runs. I ran from the brotherhood who championed my desires, I run, because they know not what I am. I know not whether they should be afraid of me or I of them. I run from earthbound ties, because I do not want my belief in belief, I do not want my love for love, to be justified. I am afraid, afraid, afraid for it. I am afraid of the monkeys which rip the garlands they are offered, apart, and scatter the fragrance of the petals to the winds, refusing to inhale, intake, mocking the sincerity of my intentions, making fun of my love, mauling my meandering, endearing music.

When I glance into the clear stream that runs at my heels, I wonder what sorrow it hath got, why it runs so, what push of purpose propels it forward. When I bend forward, when I see the water, I see me. The water reflects me, my eyes reflect the water and the motion of its stream. The trees around stand stolidly, waiting, counselling. I see my face, and stand upright for a second. My face energises me, my face enervates me. With the energy I get from the sight of my face, with the purpose afforded by my fright and the river’s, I run!

Occasionally, I stop to hark the bird’s song, I stop to meet the sun in the face, I stop to be caressed by the winds. In these rare moments, I find my truthful self asking myself: Why? And even before I can complete my question, I know why.

I am afraid of losing whatever I shall find.

And with my fear of spurning spurring me ever onward, I run, to myself, from myself, in circles, spiraling into me, but running, running, running, running, running.

Music:

பசியார பார்வை போதும்
பரிமார வார்த்தை போதும்
கண்ணீரில் பாதி காயங்கள் ஆரும்
தலை சாய்க்க இடமா இல்லை
தலை கோத விரலா இல்லை
இலங்காற்று வரவா இல்லை
இளைப்பாறு பரவா இல்லை

(“Agaram ippo sigaram achu”, from the movie ‘Sigaram’, mellifluously sung by KJY, music by SPB.)

Fire

Primordial fire
Existence of existence
Where to where
Why to why
Fire, the question
Fire, the answer.

Red hot
Belly ache
Dissolution, creation, dissolution
Balls of fire
Shaping the earth
Streams of water
Cooling, healing
Taming
Fire.

Fire of one,
Fire of one,
Fire of two,
Fire of one,
Fire of one,
Creation…
Consecration?

Motion and activity
Collisions and energy barriers
Translated, transformed, transcended.
Sparks ignite
Gears crank
Wheels shift
Oils anoint
Fires burn.

Fires of food,
Fires of shelter,
Fires of protection,
Fires of survival,
Fires of life,
Firing a life;
Firing a living.

Fire from within
Makes
Fire,
Fire.

Sustenance

I am

turning the earth out
leaf and root, trout and sprout.

Borrowing

heat from fire, moisture from air
water and will, splendid fare.

to my god
I dedicate.
myself,
I vindicate
of lack of expression;
by silent devotion.

first morsel
of the food, of the earth
sustaining
me, my god, me
in me.