Borders

This is 3 AM poetry (!). I have woken up before at this time. Most of the times I am chrono-confused, thought-cobweb ridden, and thirsty. This time it was slightly different.

You know that phase before your physical body wakes up? When your mind has hushed your not-so-bad nightmare, but hasn't triggered any physical alarms in your body? When your thoughts, all awake, start working in mysterious ways and shape your ideas in some form or the other? That time. My dream-navigator (which is just some form of me) formed a few lines of the poem and forced me to accept their awesomeness so much so that I was commanded to wake up.

I woke up. I opened Evernote on my phone and wrote a few lines down. DN couldn't thank me enough. Didn't allow me to sleep for a while. I negotiated my sleep eventually. Next morning I sat on the pot and added a few more lines. I know it seems a bit disjointed, but I don't want to work on it. Some art is abstract.

Some people too.
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Borders

Lines
Demarcating
Sanity Lunacy
Freedom Bondage
Protection Security
Human Alien
Personal Social
Religion Extremities

Love Hate (Really?)

Food Taste

Memories Vacuum
Past Present
You and Me
Encapsulating
Lines.
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On a related note: Blank

Did you Dream

So a long day turned to a night. A night full of dreams of nature.

Did you dream of the half moonlit sky above while walking on the mountains with the wind rushing in your senses? A dream so profound that you could feel the night singing compositions to you right from the ravines of the untrespassed earth. An experience where at every step you could feel that your are walking towards anonymity along with the other beings in the night. With a continuous feeling that the smiling moon is watching over you as a vigilante, to make sure you are safe and not alone yet leaving a creepy feeling. You felt as if the moon was smiling since it knew the night better than you saw the day.

It smiled at when you got acclimatised to the smell of the trampled grass and when you suddenly got aware of the deviation in that time-friendly smell. The smell that suddenly disappeared to make you aware of all the vegetation and the changes. "Hark, things change in the darkness", said the moon, smiling ever so lightly as you kept on walking, crossing mountain after another towards the end of the night.

You stopped for a second just to feel the chill in the air and chilly it was! Chilly but soothing your beating pulse, your pushing heart so that the rest refreshened you to continue the journey. Did you dream that the torches that your companions carried made a mosaic of lights that seemed like fireflies in the night? That the long trail of torches behind you gave you a dragon like tail? A tail that kept you company into the night?

Did you feel the earth glowing a little as hours turned towards the final minutes of your walk? Slightly grey and then a blue hue? Raising your hope further for the blue sky? Did you then sit and watch the sun rise to slowly awaken your senses from the dream of your night?

Did you dream this dream as I walked this path?

Mumbai

Yesterday i had to go to thane from dadar, the jam packed central line, where people hanging in the space between the train bogies is a common site. And there i was trying to find which is slow, which is the fast train.. finally i located a train which was starting from dadar, and it was full.

People hanging from the doors, a mumbaikar won't even look twice at them because its usual. But for me its always intimidating and marvelling both at the same time. Intimidating because of the risk and marvelling due to the tenacity of mumbaikars who travel daily in a similar fashion.

I let go two such overful locals!

finally boarded one which was full in the same manner but alteast i could get into it. This is a huge fast exodus. 30 seconds and about 50 people cram into a single bogie and mind you the people get down also in the same 30 seconds.. its maddening.

People push, some fall, luggage is thrown in different directions, fists might fly, shoulders might hit... no wonder we dont like rugby or american football so much... mumbaikars have to do this thing daily.. and yes even ladies have to! of course in the ladies compartment....

By the time i reached, which i found out was a slow train later on, it was already 10 pm. My crumpled shirt which i had forgotten to iron started straightening due to the pressure of people standing next to me. I know this sounds funny and yuck at the same time. Mumbaikars say that you can easily fall asleep without falling down in such full trains... :)

I attended the function and then again started on my way back... at around 12.20 am... Could not wait for long for a train taking me to dadar so took one which stops at Kurla (in between thane and dadar). Went to kurla and took the 12.51 am train to CST. 12.51 am and still quite a number of people in the train.. amazing mumbai.... it never sleeps... it just relaxes for a couple of hours.

I could have taken the cab back to Shivaji park from dadar station but it was 1.10 am and i felt like taking a walk to my room.

Mumbai in the night, taxi cabs along the road with drivers waiting for their fare, streetlights shining the streets polished clean by the heavy traffic, dogs lurking nearby barking occasionally, people like me travelling in the night... and silence.. which reminded me of the Simon n Garfunkel song - Sounds of Silence

Hello darkness, my old friend

I've come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence

Mumbai... its a pleasure to see it when its calm and peaceful.. just for a few hours of the early morning.. and then it gets back.. looking forward to another day!