Victims of Gravity

The roots of the giant Banyan tree
How they turn from uncertain shoots
Unaware of any purpose or direction;
Unaware of the larger scheme, the bigger theme..
Unaware of the existence of so many others
Who began as an aimless sprout..
And turned into the old, magnificent
Grandpa of a tree..
Wise, calm and full of sympathy
For impatience, haste and the fear of uncertainty..

Or the neatly queued Pines on a cold, crunchy slope,
Hiding cones and squirrels,
Bestowing their host with added dignity..
The meandering roads through Eucalypti
Making up with fragrance for their lack of destiny..
Perms of twisted, young tendrils
Bending gracefully with a fat Pumpkin..
Unaware perhaps hence perfectly able..
Of such prolific agility..

Should we then group them all
As fortunate victims of Gravity?

Change and Exercise

Change is an exercise for the mind..
The alarm keeps going off
The mind keeps snoozing it
And with every snooze it deludes itself.

I am fine the way I look now
I am only doing this because I have issues,
With my self-image.
Perhaps I should just accept that I am here.
After all, changing this will bring its own challenges.
I would have to get new clothes..
And I would have to work harder
To stay where I get after this effort.

I know it will get better, but you never know
It could get worse.
Perhaps it is safer here. I feel peaceful,
On this pillow of contentment.

The sun comes up then, and the contentment
Evaporates like the dew drops at dawn.
Change, is just fitness for the mind.

Sea Saw

It is just another shore for some,
Another expanse of golden sand
Facing another volume of limitless water..
Their moments spent between the two
Have nothing to do with either the wisdom of waves
Or the patience of the sand..
For them, the ocean is an assumption.

Some know the moods of their ocean
By the dead creatures it spits on the beach..
Victims of the wrath of Poseidon perhaps..
Strewn about in beautiful, helpless designs on the sand..
They would admire the sparkling waves
For their infinity, their ability of making you insignificant..
For them, the ocean is power.

And then there are some, who are caught between
The shore and the sea, like the martyr jellyfish..
Observing the snake skins that the sunlight sheds
Between water and land; and how nothing is certain
But everything gets its say, its voice, its dance,
On the shimmering, dusky, seductive sand.
For them, the ocean is equilibrium.

Mirrors

Standing between two mirrors
And looking at your own images
Mirrors within mirrors - all full of your own image
And helping your eyes find where it ends,
An exercise in futility.

Sometimes, coming back to yourself
Is like waking up from a million dreams
Waking up from a sleep, within a sleep
And tracing it all back to the real sleep
And the real reality.

They try to fence it for us, all in good faith.
Give us only one mirror, so that we don't
Drive ourselves insane.
They try to tell us to walk a path that has been
Etched on the Earth's heart - all for the sake of sanity.

But then, the image becomes reality..
With no questions asked, no answers sought..
And our image, sometimes becomes the only reality..
Where is the beauty then, of all the images?
Of you in all your forms, real and surreal
Of not believing in all of them, but of kind acceptance?

And, the understanding that if not all,
Some around me, may also have
Their own two mirrors to look into..
And the rest may choose to see..
Their image as the only reality!

Decant

There is only so much you can dream
Some days just pass by making
Little paper balls out of rejected dreams..
Too optimistic, too dramatic, too sweet
Too contrived and hard to believe..

It rains outside incessantly, and your feet,
Lend their spirits to your mind..
So it keeps flashing stories at you..
Stories, that would never become reality
And even if they do, they would perhaps be not as good,
As when they were stories on a rainy afternoon.

Nostalgia is overrated too.
How you hanker for a place and the time
That made that place what it is in your mind,
On return, the place has happily moved on,
It has embraced its future confidently without you..

You throw a few more paper balls into the bin
And get back to work. Try to worry about something.
If not worry, just a space, a comma for the sake of solace,
I wonder how sometimes, cynics and dreamers
Are brought to the same place!

Paradigms

We have no patience whatsoever,
To step back and look at our data points.
No! Don't come to us with those parametric equations!
We have decided that it is going to be a line.

Well, don't question our methods -
For they were written before your were conceived!
They have been tested enough, they are fine.
All these years, time after time
They have always given a line.

Why do you bother about close-to-the-axis..
And how does it matter what is higher?
We don't waste our time in reinventing it
When we know that it is called an outlier.

We know how you feel - and we sympathize
For once upon a time, we were young too.
But we learned very quick to see the line
And now, that is what you should do.

All this theory of letting it unfold on its own,
Is very romantic but if we may interject,
Try and find your own line soon, and
If you can help it, do away with the intercept!

You see, you are safe on the line
For there is only so much you can fall,
And there is more company here
High up it tends to get very lonely
And it will risk a larger fall dear!

On a line, you can easily compare
And see where everyone else has gone.
These little deltas work as gradients or medals.
Depending which side you are on.

The world just makes much more sense on a line
Life is an assembly line my friend,
So don't open that can of worms for us
With your parabolic trends.

In a fragile moment towards the end,
When your foggy eyes would want to see it clear,
You will never remember it as a fancy curve,
Life would then look strangely Linear!

Summer Tantrums

Nature is so motherly sometimes,
Trying to distract me from the scorching heat,
Turning the sky maddeningly purple
By bringing the Jacarandas out of their retreat!
Or mixing in some Jasmine into the tree sweat,
As I walk uphill, under the Sun's smother,
Interrupting my sulky annoyance
By bursts of fragrances one after the other
When I try to wake up before the Sun,
To steal some breeze away from the world,
She rewards me with a different gift,
The summer song of the summer bird!
Sometimes, when nothing works
And I surrender, helplessly to his overwhelming power,
She takes pity on her baby again,
And sends me her special afternoon showers.