दिल है, बहता है

सिमटता है
सिकुड़ता है
एक खाली रास्ते सा मुड़ता है
सुनता है
कहता है
दिल है
बहता है
सन्नाटो से गले लगता है
शोर में गुम हो जाता है
तुम्हारे आते ही
नई दुल्हन सा बन जाता है
करहाता है कभी
कभी मरहम बन जाता है
दिल है
बहता है
कभी नुस्खे आज़माता है
कभी बेवजह शाम सा लहराता है
मचलता है
बेहेलता है
दिल है
बहता है
तुम चले जाते हो
तब कही जाकर
झूटमूठ चैन से सोता है

Its electric baby!

Portrait- Lady with the orange flower

Have you ever noticed that there are some faces, some people who silently scream to be a portrait. They have all the things in the world which would make them a photographer's dream come true (Picture Perfect, as they say). Well, I am no photographer. And I have possibly the worst camera in the world. And thankfully, I don't lug it around except to capture cliches, most of the time.

Today's Portrait: This tiny Maharashtrian woman (It is my assumption that she is Maharashtrian). In a silk saree, orange in color, with a dark green border. The most distinct feature-An orange flower in her hair, neatly tied into an imperfect bun. Thick rimmed spectacles, a Hindi newspaper in hand. She was short, not stout at all and clearly must have seen more than 60 years of this life. A face that you can never forget and a face that you can never ever remember, try as hard as you might.

Muttering in between her heavy session of newspaper devouring. Her skin was wrinkly like a drained up sky. Hand heavily tattooed with undecipherable stuff, made all the more undecipherable by her untidy wrinkles. When her station came, (it was Charni Road I think), I couldn't help wondering about her portrait. How perfect she would be as a lifeless picture in a professional digital camera. Thank god, I did not have a camera with me.

She got off, pulled her saree up a little bit. One of her legs must have been injured during one of her great adventures, or hardships. Actually she struck me more as an adventurous spunky bossy woman rather than one who would just be happy doing daily mundane chores. She had tied her leg with a brown make-shift bandage and covered it with a cheap blue plastic bag on top, as if giving a warning to the rains.

She walked towards the bridge, and before I could see more of that magnificent old lady, who was a perfect portrait, she disappeared. Thank god, I did not have a camera with me.

Beautiful and empty

Finally, after years,
They had exchanged places.
She was now chasing her shadow,
He, love and longing.

Here is hoping though,
The years after separation,
The separation after years,
Remain equally beautiful and empty.

In between

I am good at love.
I am good at hate.
Its in between that I freeze.
Been working on it,
But its too late,
Its been too late for years.
LEONARD COHEN

Recommendation of the Week

SMUSHABLES-God knows that I needed that word . So ‘Smushables’ are squashed groceries you find at the bottom of the bag. "Confuzzled" is being confused and puzzled at the same time and "Snirt", which is a cross between snow and dirt. (Okay the last one is not that imaginative. Its the first cousin of Smog). Oh also, according to Mary’s grandfather, babies are found by dads at the bottom of their beer mugs!
Even though one of its characters is a lonely 44 year old obese man with asperger syndrome and another, a lonely 8 year old girl with a birthmark that looks like poo, and who has an alcoholic mother and a father who enjoys the company of dead birds, this movie managed to shake off a lot of my cynicism about life in general, atleast temporarily.
Mary and Max packs in a lot in itself including a huge range of emotions overarched with dark humour. At the centre of it all is a lovely tale of two pen friends, across two continents. The claymation in the movie is absolutely fantastic and detailed. It is narrated beautifully. It is funny, it is thoughtful, it is a bit dark at times and it is definitely a must watch!

अलविदा

वोह तो दरिया था
दफ़न करते भी तो कैसे
एक पल ही तो था
उसे पास रखते भी तो कैसे

सड़क जैसा बहता दरवाज़े तक आया
चाँद सा पिघल कर उड़ गया
उसे याद रखते भी तो कैसे

किसी दिन फुर्सत में मिलोगे तो बतायंगे
की चन्द सिक्के खोते भी तो कैसे

Murakami

“As if to build a fence around the fatal emptiness inside her, she had to create a sunny person that she became. But if you peeled away the ornamental egos that she had built, there was only an abbys of nothingness and the intense thirst that came with it. Though she tried to forget it, the nothingness would visit her periodically - on a lonely rainy afternoon, or at dawn when she woke up from a nightmare. What she needed at such times was to be held by someone, anyone.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

My First Ingmar Bergman

I had first heard of Ingmar Bergman in a Woody Allen movie. Woody Allen is apparently obsessed with Bergman. Somehow, I had never had a chance to see a Bergman movie so far. However, when I was reading about some interesting movies during my last trip back home, Bergman’s Persona struck me as a highly fascinating subject and I downloaded it. Last Sunday, I finally got to see the much talked about masterpiece. My first Ingmar Bergman.



The movie explores a "weird" and complicated relationship between and merging and the eventual de-merging of the personalities of two people-an actress who has lost her will to speak and a young nurse who has been deputed to take care of her.

The film begins with an extremely intriguing montage, the most haunting one being the killing of the sheep. Throughout the film, the imagery is quite stark most of the times. There is a constant eerie feel to everything. What calms the screen is the nurse’s character. It is like the spark of life in the broader landscape of death. The movie takes extremely interesting turns at various steps before it completely falls into the surrealist zone towards the end. There are a number of highly compelling scenes. My favourite scene is when the nurse narrates her ménage a trois experience to the actress and also when she reads the letter by the actress which describes the nurse’s confessions as an “experiment”.

Open-ended, well layered and beautifully crafted. Just the way I like them, most of the times! :)