Songs of Des Pa Ration, Love and Hope

8/6/2019 Songs of Des Pa Ration, Love and Hope

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Songs ofDesperation, Love

and Hope

Saket Suryesh


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Copyright 2010 Saket Suryesh

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 1463684029ISBN-13: 978-1463684020


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DEDICATION

To my wife, my family, my friends, my daughterAnd to Life, which broadly is little beyond those named before it


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CONTENTS

1 The Lighthouse

2 My Hands

3 The Goal

4 The Change

5 To Kill a Love

6 The Make-up

7 The Confession

8 The Flight

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

The Dreamer in Me

My Child

A Million Stars

The Moment Dew Drops

Taking up the Challenge

Spring Cleaning

Drop from the Heaven

A painter with Darkened canvas

To My Daughter

Patience

Coming Home

Solitude

The Moon, the Earth and the Ship


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SONGS OF DESPARATION, LOVE AND HOPE

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know that the world exist between disaster and creation, it is in themiddle of extremes that life survives. These poems advices theyoung soul plagued with self-doubt to stay on the course for loveprepares you for the glory in a difficult way as Khalil Gibran had said

so wisely and beautifully:

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.He threshes you to make you naked.

He sifts you to free you from your husks.He grinds you to whiteness.

He kneads you until you are pliant;And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become

sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

And then tells youWhen love beckons you, follow him.Though his ways are hard and steep.

And when his wings enfolds you, yield to himThough the swords hidden in his pinions may wound you

And when he speaks to you believe in himThough his voice may shatter you dreams

But then what would be the beauty of youth without itsdesperation and extremist attitude. I am amazed and astonished atthe depth of pessimism which I had thrown myself into. When youngand still survived to remain alive to be intoxicated with the nectar ofher love, as I grew older..

The two sections mark two sections of my life, if my life were a

book; it could be classified primarily into before and after her, herhere referring to my daughter.

I was the way I was when my wife found me, and though she wouldnot agree, I feel I have changed since my daughter found me.Earlier section reflects the time and age of extremes, when the calmof middle path was yet unknown and there was not room for smileslaced with sadness; the life was either at times laughing our headoff, rolling off on the mattress or was excruciating painful to the

extent of rendering everything meaningless and mundane. It was aworld full of bright colors, all vibrant and splendid, with the color ofgray missing from the splendid rainbow of youth. The poems writtensay those colors fading off as life slipped into a depressing


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SAKET SURYESH

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monotone. All the dreams dropped off like things falling off the tornbag of a tired traveler in a desert chasing a mirage. We like tobelieve that the mirage that we are chasing is a great job, a family, agreat dwelling place, and then you realize that the man who is in the

job, in the family, in the house is not you. It is some strange guy whosimply has no faith left in any of what you though as a possibledream and he rather laughs at you, and calls it an impossibledream.

It is very rarely that you come across events catastrophic or life-changing enough to shake you from your shoulder and wakes youup. I did survive through a catastrophe in my personal life some ten

years back which rather than arresting my slip on the quick-sand ofreality, further accelerated it as I slipped so fast and some of thatsand even found way into my mouth causing an unending bitternesswhich stayed on my tongue through the day. It was only three yearsback when I walked into the Nursery of Max Hospital in Delhi, on anuncharacteristically cool May morning, and saw a fascinating figurethere, which held on to my index finger with a curled palm, I didonce again think about the dream which I for long had startedconsidering as..Well and impossible dream. I clawed on the sand

over which I was slipping so fast into the abyss, as those blue,tranquil eyes looked at me. I compiled the set of essays last yearwith If Truth were to be Told and My daughter is helping me nowregaining all the idealism and romanticism which I left behindassuming it to be a necessary part of growing up, bit by bit, ( I donot know why in my poem written a decade early, in the depth ofdesperation, the ray of light came from my daughter, which I noteonly when I write it again here); hope with her help, by the time I die,

I will once again be a romantic and idealist that I was born as.

These might not be poems of great literary value, but these areof the feelings as a romantic and husband and a father. As thesepoems were written much before publishing was even a thought, itis written with the motto which to a great extent draws from whatSumerset Mugham had mentioned when he proclaimed in TheSumming Up, that I write for myself and myself alone, and I wouldfurther add that one writes the truest when one writes for oneself,

and when one does that, every single soul finds its voicesomewhere in those words. Those words written for a private worldgains public audience like a long, lost friend and magically seems to


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SAKET SURYESH

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Late 1990s-Mumbai


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THE LIGHTHOUSE

Sitting by the Sea

My vision hits a lonely lighthouse,

Right on the other edge of the sea.

A mysterious thought comes

To my mind

What would it think?

If it could?

It would think

I would guess,

That how sad it would be

In spite of all the strength

With which it endures

The mighty waves of the sea

With all its force and unloving salinity

Day and night, year after year


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If it were to die tomorrow

How lonely and how silent and wasteful

That death would be;

Even when the great lighthouse

On which the sun is at this moment

Shedding its last splendor,

Has never known love,

It has never been the lamppost

Under which lovers have met,

And fought, and separated

And wept in desperation, still,

I believe,

If the lighthouse could think,

It would think this forlorn cold,

Colder than the coldest night it had sustained

And

Here I am

Having had experienced the brightest

Lights of loves eternal splendor,

Sit in the gloom of the dusk,


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In loneliness,

Dying bit by bit, word by word

Silently,

Suddenly

I feel, I have even started

Smelling like a corpse,

Rotting on the edge of a heartless city.

.(1999 At Bandstand, Mumbai)


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MY HANDS

My hands have

A rebel streak in them,

They remain

Outstretched in search of

Unyielding love,

Even when I tell them

What they are seeking

Is not meant to be found;

For love is what poetry is all about

And imagination is what love is all about,

Poetry is a yearning

For something

Which is not to be found,

But,

My hands are not only rebellious

They are stupid and stubborn

I believe,

Even when I die,

To my embarrassment,


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They will remain outstretched

To catch hold of

A second of that silken palm

Of love and happiness and understanding

Which does not exist,

Which only lovers dream about

And poets write about.


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THE GOAL

A goal you set,

Early in the life,

Draw map and lines

Depicting path to take you there.

You get yourself readied

For the journey

All packed with nerves and hopes

You walk through the fire and

Sleep through the rain,

Cocooning and protecting

Your real self in your arms

As a mother would protect her newborn.

The Self that you thought

Would make you likeable

To the Goal

Which stares and smiles


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At you with trace of wickedness.

You fight and choke

And break and struggle

And come out from all

With all except the self.

Which had slipped past

Your closed arm

Through the night of greatest struggle.

Lost and broken

With no one to hold on to

You look around with

Eyes blood-shot red with

Tears dried up, and find

Wind has blown away

The muddy earth

On which you had made the

Paths and blueprints.

The Goal sneers at you,

The wickedness of smile

Now open and challenging,


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As you stand lost, with head

Hanging down in shame and agony

As a traveler in desert chasing the Oasis,

With painful memories

Of the One for whom you left the world,

The One, who left you, for the world.


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THE CHANGE

All,

That I wanted

Never to change

Has changed;

And, Now,

Nothing changes.


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TO KILL A LOVE

We loved each other

And stood together;

While the world around us

Sneered and conspired

And tried hard to break us apart.

So much of time and energy

The world wasted in ignorance

For little did it know

That it would take merely

Two thousand cigarettes and

One thousand miles

To kill a love

Smoothly and silently.


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THE MAKE-UP

I make my way

Through a bunch of

Smart, buttoned-down shirts

To catch her glimpse;

She notices me

And as I extend

My bleeding palms to her

In anticipation

Of a balmy touch which I

Have kept alive in my memories;

She suddenly smiles and

Turn to people around her and says

Gosh, the blood on his skin

Looks better than

The shade of lipstick that I use.


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Jesus, when He appears

In my dream

To which He smiles with kindness

And replies

Son, I forgive sins

Not crimes, which are built

Not out of innocence

But express desires and love thus

Cannot be forgiven

But can find only one resolution

Which I have given to humanity

That, which is called death.


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THE FLIGHT

The ocean

Spread beneath in

All its sparkling vastness.

Undeterred by its immenseness

I kept on flying

Safe in the knowledge that

You would be flying right beneath me

As the night descended,

I kept on flying tirelessly

To the newer shores which

I was told carried

A great promise for us together,

But as the cold fell,

And night slowly started

To lose the might,

I thought of resting

For just a while,


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Believing in a fable

That when a kingfisher is tired,

The partner carries it through,

And stopped flapping my wings,

I kept floating and dropping,

And suddenly looked down

To find the sea

Staring at me with

All its anger and violence

And in desperation looked around for you

And found you on the shore

Singing to the melody of

The anticipated morning,

Happy in the knowledge of the day about to break,

Enjoying your happy song,

Little did you notice,

As the day was breaking on your shore,

So was I, on the other end of the Sea.


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SAKET SURYESH

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THE DREAMER IN ME

There was always an

Idealist in me,

Who used to look across the horizon

From the windows,

And tell me strange stories

And made me dream wild dreams.

He gave me something called faith

In my childhood, which I took for a gift.

Offered me some funny colored glasses

Through which I looked at the world

And it looked wonderful.

Those glasses, though colorful,

Were so fragile, they kept breaking

One after the other,

Till there were not one left to look through

And splinters all across the floor

With no place to walk around,


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I danced and danced and danced,

Until the day when my bleeding feet could walk no more,

And suddenly your face flew away from my eyes,

The trance broke and

With broken steps I embraced the idealist

And like brothers, this time, we wept together.


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MY CHILD

It is a cold, frigid night,

And a corpse lies on the sidewalk,

A stray dog comes and licks it

Few folks stand around,

Curious, sneering;

Someone laughs as I

Embarrassed

Try to avoid the view

For I know

What lies there,

It is my unnourished love,

A love, died out of cold,

Orphan and homeless,

I am about to turn

And slip away in ignominy;


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A little girl walks to the scene.

She covers the corpse

Hushes the dog away,

And pleads with people to support the funeral

I notice only then,

She walks just like me,

She is my daughter,

My angel, trying to cover

The sins of the past

And wash away the embarrassment of my present.


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A Million Stars

I wish I could give youMillions of stars with shining lights;

Wish I could get a thousand angelsTo sing you to sleep in toughest of nights;

But so big are the wishes

And so feeble are my hands

And chained and bruisedAnd good for no ends,

Still I wish you a life which is gay and game,For writ on the sky, right under the moonIs your blessed name.


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2008-Onwards


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The Moment- the dew drop

Why should I allow others to measure me,And extending the logic,Why should I allow myself to measure meAgainst a hypothetical -what-I should be?

What I am is true at the moment.That being the only truth which mattersAnd I wish to immerse myself into being that,Completely and fully,Being best and most ofWhat I can beAt this moment,Which is most precious of all the momentsGone by and about to come, because it is.. Now,

Of the uncountable dew drops descending on this earth,This is one drop which has fallen into my folded palms.


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On account of the strength that it has

To affect all the moments that are to follow;

Scared, I try to break a glance

Look around to find some reason

For trying the escape the piercing gaze,

Some shrub to hide behind;

In a split-second the moment is gone

But the moment which follows it,

Has the same potent strength,

Same piercing gaze and same pregnant opportunity;

I blame the bush, behind which I had hid myself,

For not being able to lock my eyes

With the expectant eyes of Now,

For not being able to rise to the occasion

For being short on the promise that I am,

As time runs over ruthlessly,

Over the dead corpse of what I could be.


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Spring Cleaning

I am doing some spring cleaning,

There are some broken pieces

Of my soul,

Which I had pushed under the bed;

Some broken dreams,

As colorful and piercing as

Broken glass bangles,

Carefully kept in small boxes;

Some hope of future,

Hanging like long-unused T-shirts,

Thrown to indifference

in the damp corner of my cupboard.

I have taken all them out,

and I have spread it in front of you;

Unashamed and unembarrassed

For you to see all that


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All the artifact smells of naphthalene,

Having spent long years in dark corners,

In the cupboard of my thoughts;

I show them to light and to you.

I show them all to you,

Not so that you will mock

And make me more aware of the cowardice

That made me push all that to dark corners.

I hope, you will help me

Clean them up,

Clear the cobweb of self doubts

Help me shine them up,

And see the reflection of my face in them once again.


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Drop from Heaven

I have been in love

With you for so long

That I seem

To have almost forgotten

What it was

To have you as a friend.

I care and worry for you

And about you,

But it has been long since

The last time that

I danced to the eternal dance

Of shadows which incessantly plays in your eyes

The love, which entered

Into our relationship

In sly, while friendship

Welcomed it, courteously,

It stayed back and slowly,


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Elbowed the friendship out;

So I long to be your long lost friend,

So I long to be your companion,

And your comrade-in-arms,

I urge you to therefore,

Take some time out of the routine;

Let us put a spanner in the

Uniform cycle of life,

Kick ourselves out of the long slumber

Which does not leave us

As we wake up in the morn,

And welcome our dear friendship,

Which is waiting outside our door

Through changing weathers

Let us call it in,

Set a table for three,

Get drunk as friends and equals,

And dance once more in ecstasy.


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I have been wanting it so much, my friend,

That one slight, hazy view of it,

Reminds me of that heavenly drop,

Which drenched our collective souls.


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The Painter with a Darkened Canvas

Artists of all hues,

Are drawn to the mountains,

To lush green landscapes

And a weather lovelier than the land,

Where wind blows as if

Giving the background score

To an opera;

Some are drawn

To the lovely sea shores,

Where the sound of the waves,

Coming and hitting on the shores,

Like long-separated lovers,

Gives rhythm to their brush-strokes,

As they paint their white canvases

With bright and vibrant colors

Of red and blue and gold.

I am a strange artist,


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Who sits in a desert,

Amidst the spread of immense sands;

A mirage appears in the front,

Right where the vision ends.

I stand there under the sun,

Which stares down at me with unforgiving eyes,

Waiting for the right view and the moment.

As the day begins to melt into the night,

And sun seems like the molten steel

Flowing down the conveyer of a steel factory,

I pick up the brush,

And with determined steps, return to the easel,

Alas, only to find the canvas

Smeared with dark ink all over,

How do I paint, with dark writ all over my canvas?

Alas, a masterpiece seems destined to

Die unpainted, in its own darkness.


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To My Daughter.

You are the blessed hope

Amidst the wretched dream that life is.

When you grow up,

You will become like me,

Ask me to prove my love for you;

Sometime by asking me to

give up all that I have lived by,

as an outdated idea;

Sometime, by asking me to give up my old man banter

As a proof of my love for you.

But for now,

My hand on your tiny shoulder

And a small pat

Is big enough a gesture

To make you feel the love and trust

And safety of your father's cuddle.


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As you briefly cry in your sleep,

And go back to your innocent dreams

The moment I pull you close on my shoulder..

I savor this love

Beyond demands and proofs,

Beyond doubts and questions,

Beyond trust and Betrayals.

As I feel a tiny, soft hand,

Closely holding to my fingers,

And silently hope against hope,

Pray to stretch this moment till eternity.


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Patience

I have heard,

That the patience is the calm,

That true love is noted for.

Forbearance and forgiveness,

Are two wings on which

Human soul soars up in the sky,

To reach out to the

Woolen and silken clouds,

Which,

Within its folds,

Keep hidden the diamond called love.

I for one, could never,

Understand this,

For me love was always,

A feeling in a hurry,

In a rush to be expressed and

Responded to.


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A violent, tempestuous

Rage, which

Certainly was dressed better than

The plain fury

As it wanted to give in a hurry,

and get in a flash.

I am amazed

When I leave you home,

Every morning, one after another;

You with sage-like serenity

And an understanding sagacity,

Blink your eyes to me,

With a charm, I had so far not known,

And a smile touches my cheeks

Like a feather, fallen from an angels wings.

I so much am struck with the little wisdom,

Of those little hands

Which let go of my finger,

At the right moment,

So I could fly away in solitude,


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Soaring high, soaring wide,

And come back to you, when tired,

Again in your little corner of comfort.


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Coming Home- To Raipur

Today I am back in an old city,

It is rather an old town

Which is struggling with a new city.

This is the city

Which knows me better than I know myself,

The way only a mother could know her child.

This land once saw

A young man, landing on its edge,

Holding dear to the dreams

Handed over to him by his parents,

And also ideals,

Which he hoped to hand over to his offspring.

This is the city,

Which stood witness to this sacred fusion,

Of what went before and what is to follow.

This City, so watched with so much


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Of indulgence and love

The struggles and the sparks

Rising out of the friction between what is and what should be

The boy, bruised the knees and knuckles

Of his souls,

Bleeding through drunken stupor of long, hot nights

Till an angel, who was watching him,

Silently, intently, as if waiting for the opportune moment,

Picked him up, washed and cooked for him.

As the boy got better,

Moved to a new city,

Which accommodated him but

could never take him as its own,

The angel offered him a future,

So sweet and as fragile as a dream.

And carrying that dream

He comes back into the city.

With one solemn dream in his heart,

The dream which is to be

Custodian of his all dreams and ideals,


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Which he first came to the city with.


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Solitude

Oh where art thou, Solitude,

My companion on cold nights and hot noons?

I miss you so much

that your absence

Leaves a blank in my wretched heart.

Come back

As I am so lonely

In the midst of so many people,

Come back

And comfort me

In your warm embrace, Oh solitude;

Take me on the journey to the hillock,

Where tall grass dances in wild winds,

Where a tiny rivulet,

That blue, sparkling stream,

Flows through the rocks,


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With youthful abundance

Where

Heart is the only mind,

Emotions is the only logic,

And love is the only guide.


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The Moon, the Earth and the Ship

The Moon,

Always revolves around the Earth,

Just as the Earth around the Sun,

It is the larger entity which

Always provides the axis to the smaller one,

That is what I took as the law of the nature,

And shunned out of my mind

Any thoughts of what would happen,

If one day

Things were to happen otherwise.

Long time back,

As a young man in love,

Sitting on the shores of Mumbai,

As the colors of the day,

Mingled with the colors of the night.

I tried to catch my breath

In the maddening pace

Of the City of no sleep,


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And thought of my love

Whose sole occupation those days

Was to be love-lorn and misty eyed.

I saw large, gigantic ships floating

Close to the shore,

Unmindful of my lazy gaze and thought,

How could such enormous structures

Depend on a small anchor

Dropped to the foot of the sea

To hold them to the shore,

In the midst of huge waves,

With no respect for anyone

But the Sun and the Moon?

Today, as loneliness struck,

So deep

Those voiceless tears

Wash away my conscience,

I held a heartbeat close to my chest,

The sole sound which marked

The epilogue to the book of my life,


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And suddenly I understood,

Earth will probably revolve around the Moon

When it is as crest-fallen as I am today,

And how a small piece of Iron could hold

The large ship together,

Through the gravest of the tempests,

When the love is as strong

As that which my little kid

Has for me.

Songs of Des Pa Ration, Love and Hope

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