Broken Dreams

They haunt your nights, like wispy shadows

they prick ,like vengeful knives

fill you with sorrow and guilt and hate

make you life a miserable place.

You run, you slide,and try to hide

wherever you may go you shall always find

for they are within 

and shall never die.

They will hurt and they will pinch
you will stare in rising shame
and they will stare with a painful sting
from across a mirrors pane.

They were grand and meant to be true
make life happy and oh so blue
now they lie abandoned 

in the dark corner of heart.

Their voice is in you long lost friends
those relatives strange
they take form of polite questions
often a taunting retort.

Broken dreams they'll not let go
will hurt till the end of time
Broken dreams they'll always be there
a remainder of your broken self.

Poem

Your scent is with me and I am not alone;

Lost  in the stifling darkness, i found myself drowning;

Losing all hope, i surrendered.

This was Love's destiny for me;

To be alone at your brink;

With no way back.

Bhaskar

War Stories

During our morning jog, these past couple of days I have noticed my friend frequently reminiscing about his college days. He starts innocuously enough about what fun those days were and how that was one of the best period of his life, the reminiscing slowly progresses into the category of what I call 'war strories'.  War stories, according to me, are the stories about how you did something that seemed improbable, totally crazy illegal and probably what you would call “Fuck ass insane”.

I would like to say here that, my friend is in his early twenties, not usually the age for such nostalgia, and we  jog in and around the campus of his alma matter. As we go round our jogging route, my friend points out the spots where he beat a guy black and blue because he messed up with a friend of his; the spot he shared his first kiss with a girl,; and so on the remembering goes on and he falls into a monotone about how much he was respected, feared almost 'bhai like', how he fixed admissions, got people fired from jobs,  made money doing it, so and so forth.

Currently he is in a weird position in his life, his dream career has not taken off, his father has almost forced him to work in the family business and his friends view him with slight contempt, or so he believes. This got me wondering behind the reasons for his constant stream of the same war stories. Is it the place being his his alma matter or is it his mental state considering how he believes to be perceived today.  

Maybe, we all have been there at one time or another, when we visit our school or sit down with old friends. Remembering those incidents help us by giving us strength and maybe restoring our self belief and confidence when we are down. No matter the cause which brings forth such nostalgia,  we all need, at such times, a friend who listens to the same stories again and again and is there to support us.

In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?

Muttering as it traipses through streets, long reserved,

Long abandoned by all those but rain bathers.

Chiding dirty children on the streets, born out of dirtier streets,

Chasing the cats and dogs it rains as, into curling about the chimneys.

Dark alleys, shady avenues, and underground sewers,

The long fingers extend far down the smoke screen,

Arousing suppressed emotions in clouds that smell of mud,

Reeking of tunes composed on a violin long turned to dust.

The lover, on his lonesome loiter, and the loner, loving his litter,

Does rain sing to each one, his song of choice, as on a TV show?

A baritone, a treble, more often a chorus or a cacophony,

Playing keys of phony arguments of a couple, no more husband and wife,

Meandering through the warped arguments of family long dead,

Gentle goodbyes to lovers of hate, drenching Cupid’s mates.

Upon concrete roofs, confused thoughts, and con jobs,

Upon dilettantes, and dabblers and dilemmaic thinkers,

Does rain fall alike on each of them to add or lose itself?

In what language does it talk to those it despises?

In my tongue, does it? Waiting always, with a wicked comeback,

But never the heart to hurt a horde of hard hearts?

Are tongues corrupted by a stray word, spoken in disgust?

Are words swappable, by tongues kissing in unison?

Does rain corrupt and swap as it speaks and kisses, if so in what tongues?

Lost out at sea, rain falling from clouds and rising from the waters,

Looking out for its loved ones, does it ever share a compass with a traveller?

Singing in glee at discovery of an unknown composer in a shoe store,

Does rain take away the sorrows of the statue it erodes?

Does it offer a word of comfort to those sleeping

Under epitaphs that talk about all that they should’ve done but didn’t?

What final words did rain have for the crying baby it smothered gently?

A mother to quench her thirst, a brother in playful company,

A soulmate by the bedside as it finally convinced her,

That it was tender than life would be on the fragile heart.

My mission in the next couple of years to try all 30 mentioned below. Happy drinking fellas.

30 Shots infographic

Quotes by B.


life is like a roller coaster; it takes you up slowly but brings you down with lightning speed.

LOVE

Does love grow with time? Do you love a person more and more as you spend more time with them or does it go the other way, and the longer you know a person love just fizzles out and all that keeps you together is the force of habit. As you spend more time with each other you start hurting each other by saying a lot of awful thing, that they don't even mean. They start taking each other for granted and rarely do things to make the other person feel special.

Should love just end at the first furtive glance, the first eye contact, the first hint of a smile as the eyes meet? The thoughts, as you realize for the first time after seeing a person that you are in love, are pure and free o any negative bias. There is no feeling of hatred, burt or jealousy, all there is, is the realization of love. You look at them and you see them as you want them to be, you perfect vision of your partner, without the biases of any outside influence. They are yours to imagine how you want the to be, your fantasy taking shape as per your desires.

It is an imperfect moment made perfect by the YOU. That's where it should end.