Back Seat

If you like to be

in the driver's seat

all the time,

try taking

the back seat

and watch yourself.

Driving your life

turns out to be

one way of viewing it.

The driver is the driven

in the larger flow of life

that hurtles down history

between the banks of

society and power

to finally merge in the

ocean of humanity.

Back seat is the choice

between driving compulsively

and watching as one flows.

Bald truth

Baldness is not a bald fact

For a bald man,

just as there is no naked truth

In a nudist colony.

We use bodily states

To clothe states of mind.

There is nothing bald or naked

About a bald naked man.

Beating around the bush

We play games with ourselves

as we start growing up.

We don't want to accept defeat

nor do we believe we can win.

So every new suggestion is 'good'

and we secretly yearn for it

but we find hundred reasons why it won't work.

We are the owls that don't leave the garden

and won't allow it to blossom.

A father's tears for his daughter

My eyes moisten

as she picks up

from the album

photos of a sunny childhood;

her nostalgia

touches my silent suffering

over her pain of a world

shattering again

I cannot bear

to see her hold on fast

to dreams past.

My control-freak Ghost

It follows me everywhere

without intimation

and is present in every conversation

editing every word uttered by whoever.

Merciless is the word when it

rubbishes anything it doesn't like.

The pitch of my voice it modulates

from high, when disagreeing,

to low, when pleading.

It pulls me back from the present

to the rock of icy ego

formed over the past centuries.

The remote control of my life

and actions.

Making Life

To live life

you want to make it

to being somebody -

with money, with name

with expertise, with respect.

How do you get it, except by

helping someone in need

and then more and more

people in need.

If they can pay

you get money

if they cannot

you get respect

and a following.

Making life is making expertise

in relieving another's need.


image: courtesy Karen, livingcivil.com

Dialogue

To build a conversation

is to extend oneself

beyond the confines of preconception;

open self to receive unconditionally

to give from one's depth of being;

to flow into and with dialogue

is to swim with life's current

and not get drowned.

Full circle

Things have come a full circle:

as with mother so with daughter,

as with father so with son;

Not seeing eye to eye

she came away

from him;

distraught near and dear ones

trying to figure out

if their past is revisiting them

in the new incarnation.

Take ownership, the old lady

said, meaning every bit but not 

adding - take ownership under my 

rules and they are for good,

everyone's good.

The young one bolted out

leaving the young man agape.

I am tired of life, said her mother

coming full circle.

A hundred years

A hundred years have passed

since you came and

a hundred millennia have passed

since we came.

It feels warm and good

to remember you in all

your forms and avatars:

father, son, grandfather, husband, brother,

actor, director

but above all the teacher

with mother's heart

and father's iron hand.

The world yearns for

that touch of affection 

which comes unannounced.

Centuries will pass

and we will be no more

yet the touch of

love and affection will

remain alive

beyond centuries.

Mother's pain

Will you ever know 

a mother's pain?

They would have killed you,

had they known you to be mine.

I surrendered everything:

my life, my motherhood and

your right to be mothered, 

except your right to live.

Petty squabbles

One woman's pet

is another man's headache

and a nuisance for the third.

So the men get together

and pass a resolution

on the policy regarding pets.

A copy is duly pasted on

the woman's door.

The pet doesn't know

any of the do's and don't's.

It only knows affection

and senses when the end is near.

Quietly it makes its passage yonder.

Men sip the spirit of victory.

Hither thither

Multi tasking is immoral;

every task needs respect first

and not timely neglect.

Running helter skelter

you are neither here nor there,

wanting to be everywhere.

Want to be omnipresent?

Play God then, not human.

Want to be omnipotent?

Go get on to Sun then,

this earth is too small for you.

Slowness does it.....

Entangled

The entanglements of the world

are my making;

every call for me is eagerly 

received and promptly

responded, as though

it is the raindrops for 

the waiting summer bird.

Holding tight the lifeline

thrown to the drowning,

I get dragged into the

congested and the crowded

marketplace that trades

rewards in exchange for respect.

I never knew how to enter

nor how to exit.

So here I am inside

and outside the entanglement.

Be my guest

All my life I have been 

finding fault with you:

your habits, your driving

your choice, your language

except your heart, warmth

and affection.

You give your best in cooking

and I in hosting.

Now time is running out.

All I can do is to host you.

Be my guest for a change.

Cry of the Being

The whole humanity is

in a twist and a bind

of its own making:

what will happen and

what will happen to me?

And you say,

you take each moment as it comes

not bothering to see beyond

or look behind.

I am buried under pile 

of history that came crashing

on my head

from a construction that was defective.

I am not crying for help.

I am crying for what I did

to my being.

The Little One

So pretty, so self-assured and graceful

it's a hope

you wouldn't practice stealth!

Keep spreading joy

you little one, for

it's not a small thing

to bring goodness to

this wretched world.

Your house

I was in your house and
you weren't there; the first time
this happened and now forever.
But you smiled at me.

You have left behind that smile
and that is more than enough
to tell me what life is.
It is all that is presented to us
and all that is selected by us
and all that is offered by us.
You added joy to everything
you offered and faith and warmth.
All this was there yesterday
but you weren't there.
For the first time I could hear
kindness in my heart.  You were
there and you weren't there.

Reaching....Out

I thought it was over and out.

My innings was over.

I would never come back to it.

Then it kept popping out of side walls.

Sometimes it jumped from the screen in front.

It took wings on a question - what do you do?

Reaching out is still an effort.

But even getting ready to do that

warms the cockles of the heart.

No Turning the clock back

The hurt is deep
the hope that it heals
looks like a mirage in the vast desert;
The guilt is eternal
there is no hope of redemption;
The soft grass of the mind
that held the dew of dreams
got burnt badly the other day.
All that is left is
to now gaze at the horizon.....