Then and now

An old picture back ten years or so from now
A college picnic near the river called Mazhitar
It's amazing how things change in ten years
They say its a long time
It sure feels like
For the me staring back at me
Is not the same me now
Those eyes speak of definitions
Different from what I define life as now
It's a picture of people who stayed ten years back
And people who moved on to the now
I met this guy the other day
Who still talks of his college crush
The irony of the situation is
She may never even think of him now
Some love stay
Some love wait
Some love just fade away
If there was a measure of finding the best kind of love
Maybe it would be the one that waits
But thats not my story
My story
Is about a girl back then
different from the woman that is now
Maybe definitions are never perfect
Maybe the life I defined then
Was the best way life could ever be defined
For the definitions I have now are all smudged
Clouded behind ten years of dust...
Accumulated in being the me now.

Prashantee

Dt: 9.12.2009
Time: 12.07pm

Strangers undefined

Thoughts flow out of my mind
Like notes strung on a guitar
Of she says
And he says
And they say
About life and love.
Where love floats like a thin film above our heads
And I try to define it
And I try to find answers
but its so above my head
Yet its there
And covers the entire you and me
And the hes and the hers
and the thems
Yet its love
Just a fragrance
Floating in and out of our systems
Definitions unheard
Unexplained beyond his and hers
Still my feet are grounded to the earth
The earth on which I walk
Eat and sleep
Live among strangers
and call them society
There are rules and definitions
And love gets locked up
in the four corners of the place "defined" as a home
With amenities and providers
And the home maker
It forgets to float
It forgets to flow in and out
Dies and withers in a corner
Between strangers called family.

Thoughts flow out of my mind like the notes stung

She sings to a crowd

While I sleep in the comfort of this warm place called home
She sings amidst complete hooting strangers with a feigned smile and happiness
Hiding the inner discomfort and bashfulness
Yet she entertains
The crowd of "respectables"-unleashing the animal within
A thought just crosses my mind
So I pull out a pen and paper
Write a poem within the warmth of a place I call home
The respectable me turns the light off and sleeps
While she is still singing another number amidst an uproar of hooting
I know I am but a hypocrite

Prashantee
12.11.2009
11.40 am

I wrote this one after a long time...yesterday. There was a programme arranged in our "para" that's the bengali term for village or locality. And I could hear a girl sing ...and the hooting sounds outside...So I penned this down. Maybe she feels like being treated as a princess too... just my thought. I wish her well whoever she is. Dedicated to all the strong women. :)

Framed Pictures

I walk this road everyday
See a shop with framed pictures
Of happy and not so happy faces
Colorful and bright
I saw a book in a book stall
That says "Who will cry when I die"
Leaves me pondering
About life and death
About love
And how long will it take for you to forget

How long will anybody remember you or me?
A girl asked me once
If there were forevers
I told her that its just life
And abrupt bends around corners
Where you may have to leave behind a million things
Forevers doesn't exist here
You are only but a few drops of tears
A remembrance
A framed picture
Hanging on the wall

There is this boy I know
Who keeps the photograph of his wife who left
Says he realized his mistakes
There is this other boy
Who is confused
For he doesn't know what love is
And then there is this girl
Who just stands and waits
For love
Unaware of the "how long does it take to forget"
I wish I could step out of the three
And hug each one
Maybe tomorrow will bring a sunnier day round the bend
Of sunshine and clear blue skies
Its been too cloudy here for quite sometime

Maiiya

16.09.2009
12.14 am

LOVE GOT FILTERED OUT

The tears still roll down my eyes
The loneliness still surrounds
A truth that I tried to run away from
All this while
Is making itself manifest
In silences
In long waits beside the telephone
The head pretends not to wait
But the heart steals glances
Into the LCD screen
Looking up for your name
Maybe you remember
Maybe you were too busy
Or maybe it’s plain- You are not with me
Though so hard we try
And all I can do is
Pour my heart into black ink and ruled paper
My vision blurred by the teardrop
That just doesn’t know
Whether to fall off or stay back in
And then it slowly disappears
Just like truth has
Just like I have
Between faces of thousands of you have to be that
But it’s me
And it’s my heart
Which loves with all its might
Not knowing where to draw the line
Never learnt that
Never knew true love had
Conditions like that

And now I stand on bifurcations
Of roads
Of lives
Of hearts
Torn and tried to be stitched back
Of blood
Proved to be made of corpuscles and platelets
Scientifically christened
The warmth
The throb
All forgotten under factual calculations
Maybe that’s when you count your cells
Maybe that’s how you draw lines
Write rules of how much and whys
A certain set of things
Which does everything but let you be yourself

And then you think you have loved
But your love was weighed packaged and stamped
And sent off straight to the head
Instead of the heart
Where the rules would filter you either out or into the system
If you stayed you should consider yourself blessed
And follow faithfully all the rules set
No expectations
No conditions
Just the filtered rules
If you are filtered out
You should just find hobbies to entertain yourself
Try writing instead
Imagine love replaced by pages of nothings
Imagine yourself living beside paper heaps
But that was that-love negotiated
Until love got filtered out
And the only thing that remained was
Heaps of paper and black ink
And of course the name I sign my poems with.


Maiiya.
26.08.2009
22:03