Celebration

CelebrationOn May 17th, Norway celebrates the 200th anniversary of its constitution, and, as usual, the children’s parades form the central elements of the national celebration all around the country. In the capital Oslo, the children are in for a treat as according to tradition, all the city’s elementary schools parade past the King’s palace, where they get to greet the royal family, and the King himself!

Two Planets

Two Planets

From the very first time I read this poem, I knew I was going to blog it. I just wasn’t sure when. As time passed by, it kept changing. Drawing energy from events around me, and from me. Always draping itself with shades of sadness somehow familiar if I only dared to slip beneath the calm surface of the ocean that fills my heart.

Today, although transformed, it is just as pure and deep as the first time I read it. Today, it has many meanings, woven together, just like life’s tangled relations. And just like life itself, happy or sad, you just have to endure it:

Two planets meeting face to face,
One to the other cried ‘How sweet
If endlessly we might embrace,
And here for ever stay! how sweet
If Heaven a little might relent,
And leave our light in one light blent!’

But through that longing to dissolve
In one, the parting summons sounded.
Immutably the stars revolve,
By changeless orbits each is bounded;
Eternal union is a dream,
And severance the world’s law supreme.

Poem by Muhammad Iqbal, the “Poet of the East”, from “The Call of the Road”

Goodbye

I pray that when you read this, you are safely on the other side of the ocean.

It was good to have you here as always. Remember that I will always be eagerly awaiting your next visit, in whichever season it may be. And always receive you with a big smile.

Take with you all the good memories, leave behind any sad and awkward moments. Take with you the strength you gained, and keep with you the support you always have from this side of the ocean.

Remember that I am closer than your own heart. Closer than the distance between you and sadness. Closer than the time it takes for a tear to slide down your cheek.

Forgive me for all my shortcomings and mistakes. For my childish behaviour and immature nature. Look past my weaknesses and you will see goodness and friendship, and deep and genuine care. Look beyond it all and you will see yourself living in my heart.

Life

Life

Life is making choices, some easy, some hard. Sometimes knowing and sometimes unknowingly,  and then living by those choices. And always being wise after the event.

Life is a test. No, a series of tests, big and small. And you are taking them, like it or not. You’re taking them and may not even be aware. And the results? Well, by the time they are known, it will be too late for any retakes.

Life is wanting to be brave. Then realizing that happens only in movies, and the only time you  can really be brave is when life itself does not give you any alternatives. And you have a feeling that doesn’t really count, but you move on.

Life is acting. A role play to the world as time passes by. A pageant of smiles and frowns, sometimes on the outside, sometimes on the inside. The trick being never to let anyone distinguish between the real and the fake.

Life is a road, twisting and turning. Ever descending into the twilight at the far end of the valley. And you keep moving because stillness is not an option. Maneuvering unexpected turns and frightening overpasses, you hope to keep on the path as you proceed.

Life (part 2)

Autumn

Autumn

Outside there is an explosion of colors.
Inside, all the colors have merged into the all familiar black.

The day still lets the sun shine its warmth.
The night grows colder and longer.

Even among the dead, a bearable moment in the brilliance of the last magical light.
Before the shadows return and, as always, the darkness repeats its sad mantra.

The Tree

2013-06_Tree

I am the tree.

Always rooted strongly to the ground, looking up at the sky.
Always staying still, while others pass me by.

Some times things get caught in my branches.
But that they will stay with me, there are little chances.

Because all it takes for them to fly away,
is a gust of wind on a stormy day

They leave me behind alone,
and go to places to me unknown

I stay back, right or wrong,
because this is the place to which I belong.

With time I will grow old.
All my stories untold.

Until the day of the big storm.
My roots too weak to perform.

Memories will flash me by,
as I try one last stretch towards the sky.

Noname

No matter which era, mothers’ dreams for their sons are identical. During the weaving of those dreams, knots of prayers start to appear, and bits of hope materialize. But often, all dreams are washed away through the black lines of the kohl. Because perhaps history fancied one color only. The color red.

One.
These three letters have many faces.
The one we want all our lives,
the one we never want.
The one who stays with us,
the one we never get,
the one with whom we always stay upset,
and the one that has his own opinion.

Wait.
Childhood’s wait for toys.
The wait for rain after the prayers.
Wait, keeps on going and searching for a name, keeps painting pictures at the street corner, keeps being stuck in the door lock. If the wait ended, wouldn’t the eyes look away and close themselves? Waiting is inevitable, but halting of the wait is not?

The ways strung to our feet are uncountable.
Life, clutching the finger of necessity, keeps on running. No sound, no tranquility, no promise, can stop it. The roar of desires mutes the voice, while the age of necessity keeps growing. Life. No, life never stops.

One day I met a man on the street. He had in his hands two similar faces.
I asked, “What do the two faces mean?”
He said, “One is myself, the other, the world.”
I asked, “Which one are you?”
He said, “I have forgotten.”
I asked again, “What is the benefit?”
He said, “I have gotten accustomed to benefiting from misfortune.”
Far away from there, a few words written on a plaque smiled, and both of us picked up each of our faces.

Original in Urdu, “Kia Naam Doon”, by Sajjad Ali (from the audio album Chahar Balish)

My story

Why is everyone looking at me?
What do they see that I do not seem to notice?
What is different, or interesting, that I clearly do not recognize?
Is it some boldness in what I leave behind that seems to call their attention?
Making them turn their heads to me?
Or even worse, simply run away from me?

They do not see what I see, and feel what I feel. They do not recognize where I come from.
This freedom I possess overwhelms them, confuses them, humiliates them. They may think it is a burden, they may think it is a mystery; they may think I am just wild, or simply insignificant.

But they do not see what I see, they do not feel what I feel, they do not know what I know. After all, I fall over you only to remind you that you are still a human.

Thanks to Silent Reader for the text contribution.