I measure the period between two shells. One second.
One second: shorter than the time between breathing in and breathing out, between two heartbeats.
One second is not long enough for me to stand before the stove by the glass facade that overlooks the sea.
One second is not long enough to open the water bottle or pour the water into the coffee pot.
One second is not long enough to light a match.
But one second is long enough for me to burn.

-Mahmoud Darwish.

When death charmed the virgin bullet,
When war was expectant with warriors, the children of death,
the spirit spat out,
corpses of stallions into the drowning seas,
the valiance of battalions on unforgiving battlefields.
Bodies made of life, for Nations made of land. Both scalded.

If we were not a bewitched audience to tall men, megaphones and numb speeches.
Instead.
Voyeurs in this bloodbath.
If classrooms of history stood amidst this theatre of war,
And saw the carnage play out through a scarlet glass,
Would we be part of this planned Serendipity?
A part of this rehearsal,
For yet another war for peace?

It’s funny how you don’t steal my thoughts. Funny how you only hear my words, and not my voice. For if the words fell silent, there would be no us.

Like water burnt
Like a fish with a shadow
Like penance backwards,
I repent, I do.
Littered with infamy then imagined memories. I remember.
Because I cannot cry.

Why I Cant Write Poetry

An utterance so void,
I held on tight.
Drops of tears ran Pell mell,
Whether to soak the heart, or wet the brow

Reckless ink, spattering into forms so hollow,
Words that had renounced meaning,
and thoughts so shallow.

Buried behind the white window,
were murky blotches so viscous.
It coloured her soul,
and fastened beliefs,
that grazed into lands so fallow.

The word and the thought
Chase to the burrow.
Seeking their origins,
pondering if the word was an after-thought,
or the thought, the word’s puppeteer.

The violence of language,
the façade that are words,
deceive the thought,
Glorifying a recluse,
pronouncing him a holy ascetic or a pseudo-seer.

She knocked into her emptiness,
And the voidness resonated.
The gluttony of the words it said,
charmed her melancholy into poetry,
obscured the silence within.
Bared, flustered and unlayered.

The anarchy of the word’s conquest,
Its overcast over every thought.
Damned, in silent whispers,
To herself, she started to talk.

A word unspoken,
Is a thought unscathed?
The tongue that utters,
leaves the self unmasked.

Bein the amatuer blogger that i am ,i'm constantly lost when i think bout writin a new post!I ve got a zillion ideas runnin in ma head , which i can probably tell extempore in the middle of ma sleep ! but when it comes to puttin that stuff down on ma blog , i keep wonderin as to what i should n should not put on ma blog , until i read this blog exactly 6 minutes back !

So here it goes for the two people , i cannot thank enough!well yesterday was ma birthday , the birthday that has been comin year after year for the past 19 years , jus like any other day ,but why do i circle the date with a big red marker on my calender?! my dad always asked me as a kid ,"why do u celebrate birthdays?" , bein the silly kid that i was i must have said , " for the gifts obviously"! I could never come up with reasons as to why u should celebrate birthdays , so couldnt he!Probably thats why he never believed in celebrating em !

Gettin back to yesterday !It was 12.00 A.M n all of em who remembered my birthday called n messaged ! Its really fulfulling when people call on your birthday hopin to be the first person to wish you , or even botherin to wish you!Now the big question was , "What birthday plans"?!!I solved it quite easily to my surprise! i already felt a year wiser for solvin it , cuz plannin my birthdays makes me all jittery!"lunch at my place" , "I said" quite relieved !!

What kinda weather forecast would you expect in Chennai , in the middle of march? definately not rains , you would say! But hey ,here comes a sudden change of plans! The bay of Bengal which was quite its usual self for all these painstakingly humid days chose to get depressed right on my birthday! I was sooo sure my birthday plans would go down the d(rain)!!But no ,these two people whom i m gonna talk about, saved this gloomy day from bein just that!

Here they arrive with a cake n hand , even before "oh its my birthday today ,gleee" syndrome sinks in!!(I'm quite a birthday person , whatever that means!)And thats when i wake up with one kg of chocolate cake(I know its an exagerration , but it did feel like one kg!) on ma face to realise that bay of bengal is havin a mood swing today! I still dont lose hope n wish it never rains , n the met dept is wrong as usual!Okkk now the chocolate cake is all over ma face , n i peep thru layers of chocolate to see my gift! n voila its a mug with MY PIC on it!!Boy it sure felt nice!

11.00 am - it starts to rain , 12.00pm it starts rainin heavily , 2.00 pm its rainin cats n dogs n Its just the three of us havin lunch! So much for my lunch plans with everyone who could'nt make it cuz of the rains! anyway that din matter too much when i thought about these two people who did make it on my birthday . They battled the rains n the autoguys who think they're demi-gods even before the clouds indicate that they're gonna burst!They used the train service , visited my place which is more than 12 freakin kilometres or even farther , and all in the mess that the city becomes even with a hint of rain!

Thats when i realised how special these two people were!I ve known them for over two years now , n i ve frankly never thought about it that seriously ! But when I did yesterday night , I realised how lucky I was! I m not the kinda person who goes out of the way to tell people how special they are , I somehow just expect them to know it ! (you can shoot me for that)I cant believe i m actually writin a post on ma blog for them!I i've never done anythin remotely close to this , n i dont think i can ever do it again cuz i suck at it ! i think being with them has been the most fulfulling experience ever , only that i ve never given it too much thought! I ve had the best time in my life with them in the last two years .All the reva-rides n birthdays , lunches n murukku sandwiches , n finishing projects in the last minute( I ve fallen in love with group work only cuz u guys!) , fights n arguments ( i missed the best parts though!) , n discussions , n makin every bench we sit on a database of lyrics ,writin testimonials on sand ,writin our names in every combination posible , takin horrid pics , and jus stickin together thru everythin!!

Today i kinda figured out atleast why i wanna celebrate my birthday!Its to thank people who ve made my year special in some way or the other! This is a small thank you note !

This may not be a great post , it may not even be worth readin once ,you can yawn at the end of it , You may have read a million other posts like this , But I jus had to do it cuz it means a lot to me!!

unprovoked murder??

Paul McCartney once said "If slaughterhouses had glass walls ,everyone would be a vegeterian",and i cant help but agree with him!I am not a true blue animal lover ,in fact the closest i ve gone to any animal with four legs(even the sanest pets are included), is perhaps 3 feet or even farther and touching animal skin gives me goosebumps!(Blame it all on my genes!)so you can guess how much of a "pet" person I am !Though i'm not a certified "blue cross" person I strongly feel that the life of an animal is as important as any one of ours is!Which brings me to my point "Have a heart , go vegeterain"!
Leave a baby in a crib with a rabbit and an apple .If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple i'll get you anythin you ask for!I guess we are instinctively tuned to eating the greener stuff than something with legs and a heart!
For all those of you whose argue sayin that"plants are living things too", how often have to you taken crops for a walk ?how guilty do you feel ripping the skin off the sugarcane?How often have you laughed with them?And how often have you mourned their death! Screw the scientists and their textbooks! i associate living things more with perhaps things which have limbs , a heart , a few tears to shed, pain , fear,joy and love maybe!Be it a chick or a pig ,how can you see it run in your backyard one day and eat it the next day??

A pampered poodle deserves a ceremony and a funeral and the chick gets slaughtered,and finds its way to our stomach in probably one of those ceremonies!

To put it simpy , "Animals are my friends , and I dont eat my friends"!!

P.S. I dont wish to make a comment on non-vegetarians ,referring to individuals as such but on "non-vegetarianism" on the whole .