Bad Day

It's been a bad day; that way
It's been a bad day; that way
Now I'm home at last; anyway
Now I'm home at last; anyway

It's been a long, long journey today
It's been a long, long journey today
Now I'm glad I have a place to stay
Now I'm glad I have a place to stay

It's not always so easy
Things could easily be worse
Since morning, it's been crazy
When it rains, it simply pours

I feel the stretch of time
While I try and keep a straight line
From past to present inside
I am not what I seem outside

Yesterday I knew what to say
Yesterday I knew what to say
It might make a difference; it may
It might make a difference; it may

It's been a bad day; that way
It's been a bad day; that way
Now I'm home at last; anyway
Now I'm home at last; anyway

Wherever You Go (I've asked the moon to say 'hello')

In the winter
Two years ago
Things happened
Of which
I'm not so sure

All sheets to the wind
The mast swung around
Sometimes a cry for help
Is a drowned sound

We lost and won
And won and lost again
It just felt better
To fight than feel the pain

CH:
Now baby wherever you go
Don't worry, don't you know
Just wait till night-time
I've asked the moon to say 'hello'

Now baby wherever you go
Don't worry, don't you know
Just wait till night-time
I've asked the moon to say 'hello'

The starts that shine
Are just the tears I shed
While going out of my mind
The darkness my heart bled

Now wouldn't you like to smile instead
Remind me of the sunshine I left behind
The night sky is a look inside my head
While I was going out of my mind

CH:
Now baby wherever you go
Don't worry, don't you know
Just wait till night-time
I've asked the moon to say 'hello'

CH:
Now baby wherever you go
Don't worry, don't you know
Just wait till night-time
I've asked the moon to say 'hello'

'Do I deserve this?'

Restrictions, yes. Exclusion, no.

I understand that one has to yield to get yield.
What's that? You don't believe in such compromises?
Well, then I'd say...you have double standards.
I had them too. What and how much is for me to know and reform.
Just look at yourself, then tell me if (like me) you don't.
Just look at the course of your own actions.
Did you never lie in order to persecute me?
When you came back, did we ever talk about my mother's death?
Did you ever challenge those double standards of mine by which I left the dead with their anger?

Or was it too easy to decide that I wanted your money.
Or was it too easy to never again face police stations, just call some high-up police contacts and have the cops visit and threaten me? In the course of which, they advised me to give up on reuniting with my wife and daughter and move on; that my looks didn't show my age (in a veiled reference to how I was still 'eligible') and in the end, take 500 from me after making me speak on the phone to Hari Gidwani, former cricketeer, respected member of Indian society and father of Radha Gidwani who married me without his knowldege and the complicity of her mother when all of us found out that she was already five months pregnant.
Or was it too easy to abuse me and my dead while denying my right to see my daughter from her tenth month of age and till date of this post.
Or was it too easy to leave me and stay with Hari Gidwani when I was jobless at the time and claim physical mental and financial torture after six months of no responses to my calls, mails and visits. Oh yeah, the visits where the guard at the gate was told that I was not to be allowed inside when I came to announce I had a good job.
Or was it too easy to to spurn all my approaches with sheer abuse. Abuse to which I reacted when I realized that my employment status or my bank balance weren't the reason to lie and take back your and the baby's things by telling me that I had to get a job before saying anything. I believed you but it was just 'something to say' so that I wouldn't create a scene. That it was internal family decision to mete out your brand of personal 'justice.'

Of course, it was too easy to deny any sight of my daughter who has since started talking and walking and whose single birthday I have not witnessed on the basis of the fact that you are paying for her upbringing. Now, if you won't let me share in her life by saying I haven't spent anything on her; while at the same time doing your best to kick me out of her life all together, you still need to be pointed at double standards!
Of course, you proved that possession is indeed, nine-tenths of the law. What am I supposed to do? I am not going to hurt you and consequently her. I am not going to kidnap her in any form, not since the way you tricked me with your sugar-coated approach ('You do realize that the baby needs her clothes and things.'). Nor can I give her as much in the ruins of what my life is at the end of all these circumstances where I had no one, no money and no wealthy or visible family structure around me. All that went to pieces after the first time you left me after a fight where you called your father and he tried to get me arrested on a false dowry charge. Better she, Lavanya, grows up with her surviving set of grandparents and mother, well-fed and lied to about her father. My family aspirations are dead since you two left. 
Of course, you are hoping my pride and my habits will kill me before you have to deal with any comebacks in the future. Of course, you left me to do to myself, most of the things you cannot. But you know what? I have rehabilitated myself. I won't drink myself to death, nor am I going to endlessly abuse you. I will exist, always, as mud in your eye, an eventual reminder of a world that does not end, people who can be bent and forced but won't stay silent. Since now I have come to realize that I am not like you. I am not going to do the same things you do, just to retaliate. Come to think of it...now picture this, your father's team looses and you are in the stands facing jeering opposition fans. What would you do? May I tell you? You will do what you have learned and what you did to me, shout just enough abuse back and leave. Well, the only reason you have to continue to abuse me is that you fear what I might stand for. Not that your 'fathers team' team has lost. In fact, you guys win. I choose to give in to keep myself alive in the prayer of a different tomorrow.
You wouldn't understand. You will think the world is like who you are, somebody who has to constantly fight to keep what they own because there are others who are bent on taking it away. Well, if you ever loose everything like I did, you might understand that this life is actually a dream within a dream, but more about that in another unrelated (to this) post.  

 

Time Has Come

I woke to wind chimes at sunup
It had stopped raining so I
Dropped a tear in each cup
When the rain began again
I heard this sweet, sad refrain
That said only time could explain
The reasons for every change.

Time has come for my son
To rise again
Time has come for my daughter
To escape the pain
Time has come for the earth
To meet the sky
In the falling rain
In the falling rain

Listen to what you know
What you hear is what you fear
Begin to see the moments go
Unclear and definitely not near
I got a feeling, it's so weird
So much is touch-and-go
Even the long night
Was just an empty barrier
Whose...

Time has come
To rise again
Time has come
To put tears
Down the drain

Time has come for the earth
To meet the sky
In the falling rain
In the falling rain

new paitings i done

Remains

Isn't it strange
One heartbreak overflows
In your pain, time slows
Until you rearrange

The pages in your brain
Understand you can't arrange
Another outcome; more pain
Just to collect what remains

Isn't it obvious
No longer love or lust
Just survival or bust
For the things we must

Judge chances against change
Sometimes it's strange
Must I live this story again
Just give me all that remains

Got to find a guiding light
Morning will break this night
Sometimes when things are quiet
I know that I'm all right.

rain song

Lately

Lately I have seen
Anger and violence and bad tempers
Mar the Indian marriage scene
Some of those; I have also been
Maybe for some; its still a dream

I don't know what to say
Obviously (its) worse for the gay
But I just found out today
Its all a bit too much to handle
Vandals manhandle glass sandals

Sprayed influence deterrent
For you left me as well
Like a bag of stones
Sharp faced ready
To cut and grind all that was dared,
Left behind, passed on, undersigned.

one

life with a dog in a room awaits.
life with fragments deposited across time and space
life without trust in familiar institution

a place surrounded by wide open spaces, lots of kids in the neighborhood and less traffic.
a place connected to the past by images, witnesses and a new generation growing up.

the silence grew in the first week. 
i got to eat a lot.
it took time to know i had dug myself out of another hole;
even made a decision, and sold a part of my past.

now i feel nothing
now i have nothing more than what I did not leave behind
now i have finally completed what took two years to stem in terms of sad stuff. now is zero. now is when i am sure that i am definitely not the person i imagined i would be as a kid.
i do not see anything but through what we uphold over time.
i see what it takes to get this far. as life, as people, as society, civilization as well as the fact that no person is completely absolute.
 

blue skies, dark clouds, same Sun

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN RESET

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN RESET

Happy Birthday Lavanya

In the beginning, we were together, briefly.

Dear Daughter Lavanya,

Today is your third birthday. Just like the first and the second, I am absent.

No one will think of asking us what we wish. You; too young to know or remember me and I too trapped by Indian law and legal system to get my rights as your father. Which includes breaking the blockade your grandfather, grandmother and mother have thrown around you. May you never find out their true nature, for it is masked from you by genuine delight in your existence. Just their hate makes them deny the same delight to your father.

Your first birthday, mother and cake.

I never saw you start talking, walking and become a personality on to yourself with a name and an identity. If we were to meet, you would have to be introduced to me. You see, you do not know your father since you achieved cognition.So as you grow, and I remain increasingly apart, there is but one thing I would like to do.

Since I cannot be around to be a father, I would like to leave you in far more capable hands than mine. Jesus is your father. Since I cannot be around, I pray on this third birthday that he may take care of you in your life and that you may know him as your father. He is my God.
I believe in him by choice, not by birth or compulsion. All I know is, my God suffered.
May God always bless you, my dear child. I love you so much it hurts. So much so that I feel grateful to have stayed alive to write this to you today.

Be all you want in life. End all you wish in life.

Always,
- Arunesh 

Miss you, ma.

Ye Olde Indian Ads

VST! VST!

If i am not mistaken, the boy on the right is wearing Gola shoes.

Well, one must smut if one must....

Left me with a lifelong addiction to milkshakes since school

from the sublime to the ridiculous, eh?

Wonder where is she now?

Relegious texts redefined.

Bible: An ancient novel full of murder, corruption, homosexuality, bestiality, incest and cruelty. It is often read to children on Sunday.

Gita: A sacred Hindu text that is incorporated into the Mahabharata and takes the form of a philosophical dialogue in which Krishna instructs others with Machiavellian ease and gathers material for his memoirs to be published 'abroad' for saffron-clad, bald whites dancing barefoot.

Mahabharata: Call it dynasty politics with India now an Indian culture in politics. One of the biggest problems in current day Indian politics is that there is no leader and no successor. Sadly, this problem also has its roots mentioned in the Mahabharata.

 

December night

 On a December foggy night I reached for the light in my brain.

Why should I explain it can never be 2011 again. Yes, it was a real cold night. 

The wheels that stole your heart are the wheels that healed my heart.

Missing you was the last smart thing I did on my part.

  

Everyday I look at the same moon as an open wound.

It's just the way blood must flow down to the ground.

 

   

With covers ripped apart, go right back to start.

Letting things to is exactly what hurts like a needle bed in a butcher's cart.

That butcher's cart you ride carries death to your bride.

That butcher's cart you pride cuts a conscience narrow and a trail wide.

That butcher's cart you ride left me boiled, steamed, stewed and fried.

That butcher's cart you ride cut out my heart when my hands were tied.

So obviously that butcher's cart kept you rolling while my hopes died.

Until one December's foggy night I reached out and turned on the light.

In my brain, it shall never be 2011 again.

Now (now) can (can) we (we) forget the pain?

bloody cold and bloody lonely monday morning i am having.

Excavate  memories, each brings it’s own sequence of dreams. The sun peeling in skinny depletion, while those who came before confront the truth, so say the dreamers. With your secretly feared reamer from the past, my brethren behest was that i do onto my will till I shuffle with pressurized malevolent intent. Sheer luck collected by daylight, these sequences pale into.

Upstairs cryin’ in my bed I lay
 
Since you left me that very day
 
I screamed and fought against the pain
 
I even rocked myself to sleep again and again
 
Then I gave upand called myself insane.

Simple Words

Simple words
failed to make anything.
You trembled.
I fled. You bled.
I fumbled for response.
I erected a few stones.
I stared till I could no longer see.

So much insouciance.
So much stone.
You could have been there forever.
You could have been there alone.

FlashbaX

I get hopelessly sentimental.

I’ve been coming off two break offs with the same person again. what I can say is that  a couple of years ago, my ex, who had been vexed by my broken leg chapter, suggested I make friends in office. [I walked on a mal-union for a year, before getting a rod in my shin and loosing half an inch] I was well into whiskey and anger, contemptuous of everything almost and capable of extremely hurtful, invalidating and biased comments.
So at a friends place usually teeming with college buddies, I  fell in love with a girl who didn’t say much but heard my every action. I was stupid and instead of letting go of my new found friend, I proceeded to monopolize her. I couldn’t see how my aggrandized nature was stifling her,  Instead of letting go of my new found friend, I tried to find my soul mate. Almost did, too, but there were differences along with the things that make two people want to be with each other. We couldn’t handle the rest of our lives, let alone each other’s. It was an opportunity but I took it for granted. Played out my personal demons and lost all perspective.

I was too blind to see beyond my baggage. She snapped; I went to pieces;  I begged her to come back; she relented; I got confused, I couldn’t handle what was needed to fix it all. I was too fresh from my depressions.

Y’know, it felt bewildering, everyone went on about their way in a daze, including me, not saying anything. Then, with take two, I realized that I was unable to do what she said was required. In the back of my mind was a bit watching me act like a nutter. Then, with time and isolation, I began to see where I needed to operate from a more mature definition of love and life. I was just being a crazy guy snatching things when he could. Unable to express my hidden feelings or read her responses correctly.

Things came to a climax of sorts, out of all safe proportions and there was I, knowing that I had to get away and try to do it right. So I did. So many dumb approaches, that I truly deserve what I got for being so dumb. Strangely, I am somehow glad to know that I can still feel pain.

Since then I’ve been rehabilitating my heart, taking each day weakly as it comes. Learning to live again, re-learning all the small actions needed to say alive and contiguous (probably the last time I use that word). Crying rivers and hanging on to the pieces. Still in love, in so much as I could not change with her around. BAD NEWS is that I am ex-communicado and she does not even spare a single word. Today, I was finally watching a movie and suddenly I find myself rising at the sound of a passing car. I know she won’t even stray by my street in her dreams but I can’t help it sometimes. Feverish, yeah!

Anyway, I’ve begun my journey. I’ve accepted the situation. I fully intend to make the changes because, quite simply, I can see where I was wrong. I’ve begun by repaying my debts, facing the music from those I hurt and somehow hope to still hang on to some good, in all. Somehow glad that I am not all gone and have learned some things that I, frankly, only learned after she left.  I hope to do a lot and won’t rest till I can meet all Ayn Rand-based definitions of self esteem.

“I cried when I wrote this song;
Sue me if I play it too long.”