Monday, October 24, 2011

Poems of Gitanjali

There are certain things you come across in life which leave you with nothing but a stunned mind and silence. Poems of Gitanjali is one of these things.

With the onset of Diwali cleaning, my mother was busy clearing out her bookshelf this morning. Like every year, I went and plonked myself beside the huge stack of books and started going through them in the hope of discovering something new. This unassuming cover was just lying within the mess, content in its own being. I picked it up, and flipped through the pages to find verses of uncluttered poetry. Curious to know more, I started reading the Forward and the Introduction to the book.

Gitanjali was a young girl  diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of 14. She was a simple girl, from a simple family. She fought this humiliating disease for 2 years, until finally succumbing to it a few days after her 16th birthday.

Since she spent most of her time alone in her room or the hospital, she would write poems. But surprisingly, she would hide all these poems she would write in the most improbable of places. She would scribble a few lines and hide it within her pillow cover, the sofa cushions, behind books, wherever she could reach. The reason being that she didn't want to hurt her family by letting them know of her pain, through her words.

Gitanjali wrote innocent poems about the stray dog in her building, her new birthday dress, the bird she'd share her breakfast with - they are the kind of poems which would leave you with an after taste of bittersweet melancholy.

But more than that, she wrote extensively about life as well as death.  The kind of poems she had written between the ages of 12-16 are heart wrenching, yet uplifting at the same time. This particular one absolutely stunned me.

Tear Drops


Two tiny
Tear drops
Weighing heavily
In my eyes
Afraid to shed their burden
For who knows
It might
Pierce the hearts
Of those who care
And burden them ever-more
Their wounded hearts
With shattered hopes
Who attempt in vain
To keep an iron hold


I met their eyes
With a surging tide
And marvel at their
Strength and courage
To keep vigil day and night
To watch over me
Lest
I bypass them
While..
They are blissfully unaware.


The clarity this sweet young girl conveyed through her poems, will really leave you with nothing but silence.

Even though the publication of this book took its way through various obstacles, publishing this book was necessary. As it is only through work like this that we realize that 'Nothing is without meaning. Not even death.'

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Just Go On?

Standing in the midst of this rat race of ours, the rats never seem to get enough of running around. The increasing pace with which the rats are on the move, it would make their ancestors at the Karni Mata Temple proud to the point of indifference.

The young ones always seem to be running to and fro from coaching classes, the students are perpetually on the move to increase that one mark & add that extra point on their CV's while the working class is on a voluntary session of their own personal hamster wheels. 

Sometimes I wonder, when do they all sleep?

I know they don't holiday. I see everyone, everyday. 
The average cut off for every college keeps rising everyday, getting a job after a degree seems a lost cause with impressive resumes on every alternate lap and the AC buses are perpetually crowded with professionals crawling back home. 

And boy, do they enjoy their life. Don't try to defend them, I saw them celebrating. I know what I saw.
I saw them sleeping off on their books with a pencil in hand, I saw them dozing off in lectures, and I definitely saw them catching a power nap during lunch. It all looked quite joyous.

After all this joyous celebration, they have the audacity to come up to me and complain about how they aren't happy, about how they'd rather be doing a different job, living a different life.

This isn't going to be yet another post saying - Be different. Quit your job. Paint. Yada. Yada. This is just a thought I had today.

As long as we live in a wonderful country as ours, as long as we continue succumbing to the badly built social structure, and as long as we have that rude hand wake us up at the last stop on the train, this lifestyle might never end. And that thought scares me a little.