Apology

My dear blogging friends, I must apologize to you for not being able to come online to read your posts or compose mine for the blogging challenge . It was viral fever and pressure of examinations that jointly withheld me from enjoying the joy of participating in the A-Z blogging challenge for a few days. But now I am back, and here are the postings for the days I have missed: one must be civil and keep the spirit alive, don't you think so?

I wish to thank all the people who have commented on my earlier posts:-) 

Blogging from A-Z Challenge: K for Khajuraho

Thanks to the Blogging from A-Z Challenge, I am writing poetry once again. It has been a genre I had once decided to jettison for prose fiction because, I thought, my talent in that particular category of creative composition is limited. Nevertheless, one cannot expect to master one category of creative writing if one turns a blind eye to another, so I have decided to try my hand once again in wielding a dish of poetry and, I am happy to say, that so far it's not going absolutely awry: I managed to produce, though after a great deal of effort in each case, three poems in this month. 
Today's blog-post on the letter K is also a poem; it's a composition based on my experience when I visited the Khajuraho group of monuments in the heartland of India, Madhya Pradesh. Here, I would like to add, that contrary to the popular belief, Khajuraho isn't at all steeped in sexual passion; it's an erroneous orientalist view that should be ignored. The group of monuments though generously sculpted with sculptures of an erotic kind, also contain myriad figurines that have nothing to do with lust or passion. Passion, there might be, for so breathtaking and surprising  the sculpture-embedded structures are that I don't believe that the geniuses who crafted them could have done it without the inspiration of creative passion. 

Khajuraho 

Blogging from A-Z Challenge: J for Jaded World-- a poem

J for Jaded World—a poem

Now all the casements and egresses 

 are closed, and we are trapped in the stinking room

eternally waiting for a dollop of fresh air,

on a spot of melting sun; a dead fly rests on the window sill,

its corpse-eyes glued to the closed exterior,

it’s head resting on the un- sunny mat of dust.

All around me life balks, stops short and waits for an end.

The clammy cells of our bodies refuse to profuse anymore, 

they die in hoards, drowned in the acid of blind ignavia.

And then there is the heated up, hollow disposition

of a surfeited, exiguous  physical life too.

This season’s white-washed wall is fading away,

it seems as cold as a corpse with protruding cheek-bones—

lifeless!

A bunch of yester-season’s flowers and crows

form the jaded company that pulls its shroud off

with unheard cries of alarm and hatred,

and all the while, the un-jocund earth lies still, 

un-calm, unhappy

in the coarse-pink satin layered box of eternal torpor. 

Blogging from A-Z Challenge: I for the Internet!!

Prior to composing today’s blog-post, I sat ruminating on the letter I. For the purpose of better concentration I had switched off my Smartphone and was away from my laptop as well. After a hiatus of ten or fifteen minutes when I found myself vacillating between ‘I for the internet’ or ‘I for impossible’, I found my mind yearning to check the Facebook webpage and see if there was any update. My sudden urge to press the button of my cellular phone, which was almost indomitable, led me to believe that indeed it the internet to which I should sing my paean.

When I started thinking about the internet and its illimitable possibilities, I came to the conclusion that the supramundane agency that brought forth the genesis of the world must have had access to the internet. Come to think of it, the internet is as omnipotent and omniscient as the all-mighty mother or father dwelling abaft the concave watchet dome. Though born out of humble academic sires, the internet has overtime become the portal housing such myriad people under its shelter that you wonder sometimes how good it would have been had we indeed lived in a virtual world. I like several of my peers have once censured the internet and considered its distracting quality as discomfiting; but then I didn’t realize that it is absolutely erroneous to disregard as powerful a medium as the internet for the reason it distracts us: aren’t everything we encounter in our lives, aren’t our jobs, our household chores, our movies, our books also imbued with the distracting quality for which I was falsely reproaching the net? Right now, my idea of the internet is that of a savior, a brilliantly illumined second messiah who came into our lives with breathtaking possibilities ready to fill any vacant space that we have in our lives with new and improved playtime activities. Of course the discretion rests with us as to how we would spend our time here, what social-persona would we adopt, or perhaps how veridical we would like to be. “Which will you choose,” I wonder, “which will you choose, which will you choose of these?”

A casual chat about the internet is never complete for me without a reminiscing paragraph dedicated to my favorite movie, Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan starer You’ve Got Mail. I guess I watched it a thousand times, and yet, every time I see it, the romantic, heart-melting movie makes me think about the deliciousness of the internet. Indeed, I wonder if there is any other more perfect glory-song written and dedicated to the medium that literally drives our lives nowadays from start to finish: the internet.

I close my eyes and try to think about our bluey earth: a brilliantly lit up labile globe where every inch of its surface is populated by a person who has access to the internet. It’s a universe where national, regional boundaries are conspicuous by their absence; here the citizens of the orb are one and united, they stand in circles celebrating life, holding one another’s hand and exchanging limitless data. This is my idea of a perfect world, a world where boundaries that separate us and prevent us from interacting with one actual life with be stuff that fictions are made on. 

Blogging from A-Z Challenge: H is for Home sweet Home

H for Home Sweet Home

Image via: http://paulasponderings.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/home-sweet-home.jpg

Home is my own dreamscape

where buds of comfort

effloriate and bring to life

frequently my own unsung musings,

with a splash of happiness 

that wraps me throughout the day.

Two summers and two winters have

passed by, but my present home,

my abode of happiness

still remains new.

It is as sweet as ripe mangoes,

as pretty as a bunch of peonies,

and as delicate as the petals of a white rose.

White is my theme here, white linen,

white chalk on a tiny chalkboard

with scribbled messages indicating

a wish to freeze fleeting moments

or cherish subtle warm memories.

The bell-peppers are ripening this season,

ample little Catharanthuses load the plants

in my little balcony-garden and flush

my life with red, pink and white hues.

My clean little space, decked in

comforting beauty is a sight

that brings abundant pleasure

on tired days when I come back

from a disquieted world waiting

for a touch of order.

Then with a sepia-tinted gaze

my home assures me that you can have

your own little world of calm and beauty

away from the ranting and fretful house outside.