Naked Man

 …it was a fine, cool, rainy and mesmerizing evening.  The clouds had stopped their love making but still stuck together leaving no space for the light to pass through.  The Sun behind those clouds should have lost patience and gone home to rest by then.  She stood still before her canvas with palette of all colors.  She was drawing the outline of the picture she wants to draw and the clouds and breeze were giving colors to that painting in her mind.  She knows that art is not a brain work but mind’s voice, souls rejoice, or souls cry.  She knows that art is the words that she couldn’t speak or may she do not want to speak.

Those that speaks a lot inside their mind but not outside becomes writers and those that don’t talk even within them but has a lot to say becomes artist using colors.  She had a lot to say but, at the same time, she knows least of the least people understands and others underestimates her.

She started with black, in fact slightly grey.  It was portrait of a man in his early forties with broader shoulders and heavy chest with dark black nipples.  His torso is not athletic but strong. Unusually, she was drawing the man with a small belly slightly protruding from his body which is unlike of artist holding brushes in general.  Most of them want to draw a strongly build man with flat stomach and curved torso and sculpted biceps and calf muscles.  No, that is not the picture that got manifested in her mind. It was a middle-aged man who was once strong and athletic but life had made him tired and naked; yes, it was naked middle-aged man that was in her mind.

She tried hard to bring it in to colors in the canvas. The harder she tried the slippery the image of the man. So, as her usual ritual, she started painting as slower as possible and then she lost herself in the man. The man became real in her mind and slowly he walked towards and she asked him to stand still in a posture she wants to paint.  The image shaped well slowly. His hands, his belly, his hips, his genitals, his groins, his thighs, his calf muscles, his foot and fingers. He completed himself when she was him. She merged herself in him, the Sakthi to Shiva, the momentum to the electrons in an atom, the energy that comes in the fusion and fission.

She felt completed but not satisfied for the story could have been told better, as all the artist’s unsatisfaction.  The stood tall, slightly bent with tired eyes and melancholic reaction in face but healthy hands and legs and genitals. 

What do you mean by the story could have been told better or what do you mean by story here for this is just a vulgar picture of a man?  - somebody passing by asked her. When an outrage or a harangue was expected, she laughed louder for few minutes irritating the questioner. 

She said, “The moment you said it is vulgar you already had a story with this naked man as protagonist in it but that is your story and that is the first success of this man.  And again, that is not what it is, not my story.  Look closer, he is not a common man who wants to dress up and show up in suite or tuxedo and wear shoes and ties.  He is uncommon who wants to be naked. This nakedness is not vulgar but nirvana or the body that disowns everything, the body that doesn’t carries the life of his past or future but the nature of his being alone.  Look deep into his eyes, little pain and sadness of the experience which he gained all these years that which is loaded into his head making his head slouch.  Look at the small scratch over his shoulders, those are love bytes, the identification marks of the intense love making in spite of all his pain.  Look at his uncombed hair, the carefree sense of self beautification for he knows that beauty we see in others is something that is inside us, as Rumi said, so the ugliness. 

Look at his hands ready to work, ready to carry weights but tired of the baggage he carried all through his life but won’t hesitate to carry again.  Look at his protruding belly, he realized he is not this body, not this mind and brain.  He started to relax too much and enjoy the tastes for he knows he can be back into his shape anytime he wants as this is all an illusion that mind plays in the virtual screen.  He understood the illusion, the greater maya. Look at his calf muscles, his legs and toes, ready to run and stomp on any thorns and bushes but he hesitates for he realized the run is not going to taking him to no place.”

“Look at his genitals…” she started and went silent for a long time. 

-why are you staring at that!!! They asked irritatingly. 

She laughed again, “you think that person I drew, those hands and legs and organs as somebody else, but those are part of me, from my mind and soul.  He is me in man form, my child who grew up only in hours.”

-insanity, they said and walked away from her.

“Look at his genitals, he cares least about this world, least worried about the culture and dogmas of this world.  He found the nirvana; everything is his and he is everything around him.  To hide his sexuality, to cover his body, to obey the dogmas of this world is a sin, he learnt.”  She said, from the heart of an artist.  There exists nobody to heed.

                                                                                                                                                     [SK]

 

A stupid story;

 

A stupid story; Once upon a time lived a man called Huuman.  He is strongly built; his hands are stronger enough break a coconut in one strike and his legs are so strong that he can run double digit miles without perspiration.  He ate at least five meals a day and slept 9 hours daily and worked hard for 8 hours in his paddy field.  Daily, on his way back from his field to home he saw a butterfly at the same spot.  First few days he saw and observed its colorful wings and left. He didn’t think about at after that very moment he crossed the butterfly.  Once a thorn prickled in the spot where he used to see the butterfly and he stopped and bent down to pluck the thorn and the butterfly flew to him and sat on his shoulders. From then on, as and when he stops there, the butterfly flew to his shoulders.  He didn’t touch it or offered his hand to ask the butterfly to sit on his hands.  He just left it as it is to sit where it likes to sit.  He felt happy to see the trust the butterfly had on him and he got obsessed with that feel of love and started to stop even in the morning to see the butterfly.

The Butterfly too reciprocated his love for him and flew to him in the mornings too.  Slowly, he started thinking about the butterfly in the mid of his work and he ran to the very spot but the butterfly was not there since it is its time to work or may be rest after work so he returned to work.  After his lunch he suddenly remembered the butterfly again and he ran to the same spot and it was not there and when he was about to return the butterfly came flying to his shoulder from his behind.  Overwhelming in happiness to feel the love he felt in his heart he stood there for a long time.  Then the frequency became three as he started running to the spot after his lunch too, also the duration increased and affected his productivity.

He didn’t care about the decrease in productivity as the feel he thought as love for him from the butterfly, flying around him and sitting on his shoulder preceded.  As he got used to it daily, he started talking to the butterfly about his pain, his work and his family.  The butterfly sat still flipping its colorful wings slowly as if listening quietly which gave Huuman a feel of satisfaction and insane happiness.

The day of harvest came and his work in his field stopped temporarily.  But he decided to go to the butterfly spot just to meet his colorful love.  This time he went little late in the morning to see the butterfly was sitting in the shoulder of another man, the owner of his neighboring farm. He was shocked and furious but then he thought as he reaches near the butterfly will switch shoulders to him; but the butterfly ditched him.  He went to his field and sat under a nearby tree as the harvest season was over and work will begin only months later.  He was sad and furious at the same time.  He didn’t go during the lunch time and he didn’t eat.  In the evening at his usual time, he walked crossing the butterfly spot and the butterfly came flying and sat on his shoulders.  He felt happy and forgot everything but told the butterfly how much he felt sad to see it sit on other man’s shoulder.  The butterfly listened patiently on his shoulders flipping its wings slower than ever before.  He took a longer time than his usual time, and while he was talking the butterfly suddenly left his shoulder and flew to same man who he saw in the morning. 

Huuman got furious and shouted at the butterfly about its loyalty and his love. Within seconds he approached the butterfly it flew away and disappeared in the fields.  He was sad and furious again and left home.  Once after reaching home, he didn’t take bath or eat or sleep.  He sat silently in a corner of his hut.  His mother called him many times to eat but he didn’t respond, so she finally decided to have a conversation with him on what is going inside his head.

He explained the whole scenario and his love for the butterfly.  The Mother listened carefully and once he finished his story she said “Son, how soft are you to fall in love with a tiny butterfly!  How sweet of you to feel sad for the imaginary love that you have built for a butterfly”. 

“No, Mother it is not imaginary.  It is real.  The butterfly trusted me but I don’t know what made it to ditch me and leave me for another man” Huuman said.

“Son, first of all it is a Butterfly.  The meaning of Love of that species is different not the one our species have in our brain.  Its love language is different.  It doesn’t even know what you are, it may be thinking you as a moving tree with different spores you carry over your body especially on your shoulder which has fallen on your shoulders while you walk crossing different plants and trees on your way. Stop looking at it has your love and start loving it as butterfly and love the butterfly for its own nature.”

Huuman sat in the same place for an extended amount of time and got up to take bath.  He ate and slept.  Next day he woke up very late and after his bath and breakfast he walked to his field.  When he reached the butterfly spot the tiny creature came flying to his shoulder. He smiled at it and dusted his shoulder.  The butterfly came close to his shoulder and flew down to the grasses where he stood.  He smiled and walked away.  From then on, he stops and dusts his shoulder just to see the butterfly coming and flying around.  He never stopped loving it but he loved it as it is and not as what he wanted the butterfly to be!

An Astral Spirit That I Met!

I didn’t seek her permission to write this as I’m unsure how to get it or where to find her, but taking it for granted, with an assumption she doesn’t mind writing an episode of my experience.  It was quarter past four in the morning and I was standing in the backyard of four stories building.  On the top floor the lights were on, bright and luminescent.  I could see the blur images of people rushing here and there.  And suddenly the movements stopped and everything become slow but the luminescent become high for a second and returned to normal.

 

Before I continue, how did I come there when I am supposed to sleep tight in my bed? I’m sorry, I have no idea. What is that place actually? I have a vague idea about it; I looked like a hospital of a medium cost one. I was there from nowhere, maybe I could identify that backyard if I see that again but route to reach there is the missing part.  And when I was standing there, the purpose of my visit was unclear for I have no intention to go out early in the morning.

 

When I was standing there without moving for I do not know where to go, somebody jumped out of the window from the fourth floor and stood about hundred yards from me.  It was a girl of about twenty-five to twenty-seven.   She jumped without any efforts and she looked glowing with the minimal light from that window.  She walked slowly towards me but I could feel the agitation in her to move faster somewhere.  I didn’t remember if I waved at but I remember that I was not able to move towards here.  No, it is not that my legs are stuck in the ground but my conscience didn’t allow me to move.   She said something walking towards me which I could not understand or couldn’t hear.  She talked animatedly and I could fee that urgency to go somewhere in her action.  She showed that window up above her in the four-floor.

 

I told her that I couldn’t hear her and raised by head towards the window in the four-floor she pointed.  The moment I saw the window the fear sent lighting in to my spine; the window was not opened at all; then how could she jump!!!

 

Slowly the realization hit me that neither she nor me had body that sent me into perplexity of who is dead here? Me or her? Or both?   Anyways we both are of the same state of matter or we both share the same energy and that realization relived me from fear.  I called her near and when she neared, she didn’t stand next or near to me but within me.  I was all like energy collating.   And she started to talk in her urgency to move away to some distant place.

 

“I was suffering all along and I in the bed also surfing many places.  I was suffering for quiet some days and now I’m free.”  She said before I asked her anything.  The communication was energy exchange and explaining how I understood her was beyond my skill to write that energy communication but she spoke in the language, which felt, only we two understood at that moment.  She continued “my family was planning for my funeral and they have not planned it yet, maybe they still believe I am going to return to that body.  They didn’t plan it yet” I have no questions or answers for her.  “I have a thousand place to go” she said and separated herself from me and slowly walked away from me with face turned towards me.  I realized that that was the image of the body she lived in so far.  And as she walked away farther and farther, she only became an airy light and finally melting in the air.

 

The next second I could feel the hard bed on which I was sleeping.  I was wide awake without opening my eyes.  There was no fear, no perspiration, no sweeting but perplexity.  I couldn’t believe what I saw or what I had experienced. 

 

“Hey Girl, show me a sign that you were real, my experience was real.  Show me a sign that I was really out of my body in astral plane” The bell rang, that was my alarm at 4.59am.

Trance

 

I’m in trance now after drinking from the cup of tiredness and gulping the wine of drowsiness.  The poetry doesn’t come, the story doesn’t get better, my heroine is not smiling, my protagonist is not crying – nor doing anything but the words come.  The words come one after the other like a drop following the drops from the clouds when it rains.  No, it is not drizzling but it is a down pour, cats and dogs. Oh, what should I do with those mosquitoes that sucks my blood and the lashes that wants to cover my eyes but the fingers that wants to keep typing words after words.  I have nil patience to read what I have written neither anybody but I write for I will die if I keep those content in my mind and my brain will burst and head will blow into two thousand pieces; the two hemisphere thousand each.  My stomach is bloated with the food I ate for dinner which just added more wine to the body in trance.  How could one explain the state of semi-state of sleepiness.  How many know that this is the state of ecstasy, you control your sleep and sit alone when the entire body wants to fall down anywhere and in any corner of the house and sleep, just sleep and do nothing. It is the state of ecstasy the god like state where you realize nothing is so romantic than sleeping undisturbed. O! Everything and anything you write in ecstasy make more sense for it is the true you that writes from within, it knows no lies, no dogmas, no moral, no ethics but the state of just being. The metal that rotates over my head, the blades that spines the air to keep me away from sweeting is one other tranquilizer that sings lullaby with the acoustic of the electromagnetic force.  I have no idea of writing more than five hundred words so I look at the bottom of my computer screen which gets increased slowly when I was normal but now, I see it is running wild.  I know I have to stop at some point of time and go to sleep for I cannot stay drunk with this drowsiness for a longer time.  It feels blessed when this word software underlines the words and sentences that needs correction with a comma or space to give or a space to delete, but now it is annoying.  There were lines and lines and lines in blue and red to correct, who cares.  It is not me who is writing; those are not my hands that is writing, it is that Indian or Greek or Egyptian God for writing who is putting words in to my mind and driving me crazy to type and type and type.  I am typing with my eyes closed for I care my least what I type as the divine that is responsible for writing is sitting on my lap and writing.  Okay Sir Mr. Lord of the Words I want to sleep please get up and get lost until next time for it has already crossed five hundred!!!

                                                                                                                                    [SK]

What - Words - mean to me!

 

What does “Words”, all those I write, planned to write, wanted to write, imagined to write or missed to write, mean to me!  I was wondering on my way to a Gnana Sakthi’s shrine. All the words that bloom in my brain were like the panorama that I see through the vehicles window, it changes, come back, alters with the angel sometimes blurs and darkness.  That is all it is! Nothing more! I was pondering until I reached the womb of the shrine where the Gnana Sakthi stood effulgently in the twinkling oil lamp.  There were two kids not more than 5 and 10 whom I didn’t see until they started singing, I realized more than humans the Sakthi, the unbridled, uncomprehend energy, was listening to their song, the voice, the music and the words.  Music is a confabulation between the human heart and the energy that was wide spread in cosmos like the Om sound of the universe but words make it more meaningful; is it not!

 

What does “Words” mean to me?

Words are my confabulation divine, negotiation with the evil, my perplexion about world, stick in the hands of Jesus, flute in the hands of Krishna, a sojourn in a tiresome journey.  I was still standing before that Sakthi.  The song and the lamp arati brought tears in my eyes for reason unknown, unexplained, and inexplicable.  I understood that that is what “Words” mean to me, an inexplicable reason that brings tears in eyes, melting of the soul, that drop of tear, the devotion, the fear of superior energy, the love on ubiquitous omnipresence.

I walked out of the womb of the temple to sit and continue to contemplate.  I saw a couple circumambulating the temple, she took the vermilion powder and applied in his temple (Temple! You see!) a nonverbal communication that you are my love and he bent down to understand it, a surrender.  That is what “Words” mean to me, a surrender, an understanding between hearts, an untamed love, unconditional compassion, the love!

My stomach growled in hunger so I walked into the place were Anadhanam was offered.  When I was waiting, I saw an old man shouting for stopping him in line as the room was filled with the first batch and he looked at me and consoled me saying that the food will be there for us, don’t you worry, they wont talk home the left out (sarcasm).  That is what “Words” mean to me – anger, anxiety, sarcasm, unventured horizon of the future, and that hunger, and finally that consolation.

I remembered Mahakavi Bharathy’s poetry to destroy this entire universe if a single person is not offered with food.  That is “Words” for me; the compassion towards empty stomachs, communism, rebellious thoughts, the sword in hand, the war, the fight, the wounds, the desperation, a cry, a longing!

I ate – stomach was full and got back into the vehicle and a trance swept me like a breeze to take a nap.  That too is “Words” for me… forget everything and take a nap, fall into dream of something sweet, the cushion comfortable seat of the vehicle, the acceleration that give thrill and the wobbling that sings lullaby are all words for me.

                                                                                                                                SK

Techno-Romance

 

…I start with dots because I do not know where to start and you see only one dot is a stop, add two more to it and it becomes continuation. It is the continuation from somewhere I left or continuation from what my mind is chewing at the moment.  With every day I grow old I feel like I’m an alien in this faster world.  My childhood and adolescent were termed as fast world when the technology started sneaking in every middle-class houses.  The satellite television channels which peeped in for limited hours and later become all time and the thirty minutes news in those channels then become a separate news channel and then now a nightmare with 24x7 flash news, landline phones which got converted to wireless landline phones and later to mobile gigantic phones and then into smaller handsets and now again become gigantic mini television in hands, and the music that were more softer which was a continuation or with the trace of the earlier generation with respect to the language, words and meanings which now become only noise with all dramatic technological tools (musical instruments), of course the movies which were full of songs in the golden days then become partially songs with less violence and more story which become only acoustics of whatever it is.

The televisions, the white lights, the mobile phones all emit the same level of Hz, the frequency, that damages the human body which sometimes makes me think that everything is designed, in the name of technology or luxury, to cause damage to the human existence!!!

Given the life to the tools and technologies what I miss the most is the different types of romance that blooms at different stages of life.  Times when letters were exchanged which then become emails. The telephone booths then become mobile phones then into texting and now into WhatsApp.  So easy to talk and chat nowadays but imagine the days of letters and strict parenting the meeting will be coincident and chatting will be only between the eyes which then become little easier with the landline phones in my adolescence though the strict parenting and location to meet with those eagle eyes that was ready to spoil the names, especially the girls made life tougher.  Said all those stuffs the time taken to talk one word to each other took years and with the urge to be together for years built a bond that continued life-long if it was a successful love story, even if it is not the story stays in the heart.  The train love stories, bus love stories, street love stories, and letter love stories were longer and sweeter stories than the WhatsApp and Facebook stories.  Isn’t it!!!

What is missing these days is that urge that brings hearts together as everything is faster and communication is fastest.  And of course, the western culture that made Indians believe that meeting and chanting and dating at ease is part of our culture too when westerners are taking their direction to East for peace and salvation from what their culture had given them!  When you walk the hard path towards your destination, the journey becomes as precious as the destination.  That experience is spoiled when everything is made easier.

                                                                                                        [SK]

if you’re reading

 

…if you’re reading, my love

I want you to let you know that you’re reading my mind.

…if you’re still reading; 

You’re my words that I write and

The meaning between the lines that I hide.

You’re the warmth in the crowd in my winter below the sky,

Don’t stop here for  neither I  nor my words could fly.

Sometimes you’re that favorite song on the pathway that I long forgot,

And many a time, you were that last drop left in the water bottle

That wets my throat when the environment scorches.

Read on… 

When it rains heavily and the road was not clear,

Your memories were the wipers of my car’s windshield!

Many broken promises that I made let to not one good day, so

I forgive all who break the promises in attempt to break me.

Few more lines please…

I could write the memoires of your fragrance, your image,

the caress, touch, hand-in-hand walk in the rain under the umbrella, but

that drop of tear at the edge of my eyes in the night can do it better !!!

                                                                                                                       [SK]

The Search…

 

If you’re searching for Him, the omnipresent, the omnipotent,

The first question is to ask why you’re searching and

What are you going do when you find Him? That answer is the beginning

of the journey that takes longer than ever imagined or

Shorter that ever achieved; intensity decides the speed!

The external search – the idols, the temples, the venerated,

The Gurus and the Cults, different processes are important, so

you turn inside to you and begin the search again, listen

To the voice of the inner ‘You’ and identify the medium

is not external but you and the way is not on the earth but

inside you, the destination is not in the sky but within self!

At the end, which is a new beginning, you will understand

The omnipresent creates the omnipotent in one cycle and

The omnipotent creates the omnipresent in another.  The two are

the same and also different.  The duality is His nature and

Nature is His twin.  But to know the truth that the tressure is

In your own home, below your feet, you need to stroll

All paths, all roads that never was taken, all lanes

that were never been explored.  When your foot aches,

When you could take not one more step, then He appears.

He appears not in any physical form, not in any physical or

Astral plane but within you.  The light comes to enlighten you!

You’re what you are searching for!  Thathwamasi!!!