Friendship..

The idea of friendship is a misunderstood one. Confusion starts when affection is credited to be its foundation. It is not. Friendship is always founded on convenience. Though not just in the narrow sense of the word, limited to only physical world, but encompassing emotional convenience as well, and significantly so. In fact, this emotional convenience is the basis of beginning of strongest bonding of people into friends. A friend is one whose presence imposes minimum inhibitions-a big convenience.

A mild form of friendship may develop when there is tolerance towards each other's behaviour, where people feel free to be themselves. This, however, can be achieved through a rule based gathering, say a club. An example of purest form of convenience. However, this alone may not develop in a deep friendship and may remain a just a convenience. Deep friendship cuts much deeper.  Someone who cuts through the frivolity of public persona that we maintain and looks at the key component of our emotional core with a belief that in the end this component is us, and he or she is ok with it.....once that happens he or she ignore all our quirks, whims, oddities and accepts us, tolerates us.

Knowing the key component of our core gives them comfort, a peg to hang their trust on, trust that our core will lead us to be considerate, generous, and selfless when they are at their most vulnerable. Highest freedom from inhibition that anyone seeks is to be oneself when one is most vulnerable. And by definition a true friend needs to provide that. Truest friendship is in part a kind of deal with the devil, in the sense that you promise to look at the darkness in your friend's soul without flinching.

But, to know this core takes time and an initial exposure is necessary condition. This exposure is normally forced and circumstantial, and thus all friendship begin by chance. In a particular situation, when people are forced together, out of many one is chosen because one was perceived as best option.

True friendship does not begin as dependence but as a convenience, but ends up in dependence. Dependence created by tested and verified trust. Friendship is not like romantic love, which is much more biological and much less selective (sexual impulse is biological and ignores behavioural aspects of the partner when at peak), or a love that is mutual in generations linked by a gene, which also is biological and not selective at all (Brother loves brother, father loves son etc). In these cases affection precedes knowing the person, and always is cause of knowing; however, all the affection that we feel for a friend is not the cause of the friendship but a result of it...

-Pulastya

Coffee

Rain and wind dancing arm in arm, silvery and grey, being woven in to each other fall on the cemented floor and flow as endless sheet of liquid cloth, alive, flowers bursting out of it....

Black is shining out in the sky, and in the cup of coffee....Good weather for coffee...wondering if a mug is  on your lips too love!...it would be satisfying for both, its essence for yours—coffee for kisses.

Ah, good weather for envy too...

-Pulastya

Loneliness

There is a kind of loneliness that builds gradually, through a process of breaking away from the world strand by strand. It is in some ways also a manifestation of acceptance of death, and of preparation for that final dissolution in to the eternal loneliness. There is another kind, caused by momentary snapping of connection with the familiar world, loneliness of being out of place, made of the discomfort it causes. It’s texture is exactly like when loud music around you suddenly stops playing and a void is left behind by its sudden disappearance, leaving you confused about void’s nature, about whether it's a residue of something that has suddenly gone away and a form is left behind by substance which has just disappeared and there is still another a second left for it to cave in, or if it is something that was hiding in the shadows and spotlight has shifted on to it all of a sudden... One can never really comprehend this emotion; is it the longing for the music gone away or is it discomfort of finding your self in the embrace of silence, that is, something unexpected?  But what one definitely feels is a surge, of emotions...

Emotions are chaotic, and habits, playing out in a familiar world, are the way of enforcing some kind of order to them. Habit is like a shallow channel through which furious stream of emotion flows in some what controlled way; but, even a momentary disconnection with the familiar world of habit can create a massive surging emotion which always takes the form of impossible to understand flood of feelings summarily called loneliness.

-Pulastya

Basic Instincts

Instincts are obsessively focused on an assigned task by nature, even when their purpose stands fulfilled they never stop practising. Drill, however, should not be construed as war it self. Real men/women are not those who have killed their instinct, real men/women are those who have tamed them, learned to wield them, be in control. The realm of ‘feel’ is beyond human brain, expressed behaviour is more readily driven by it though. And most of us take great care in expressing proper behaviour. That, also, doesn’t mean that we live a double life-one in the world and one in the head, it’s just that perfectly clean house of emotion is an impossibility, instincts keep littering the place with unsolicited feelings; smart people understand that and work hard only on keeping their worldly house clean.

-Pulastya 

Envy

That morning young rose was flirting with new sun, under the window of your bedroom, swaying in morning breeze, showing off its supple body to entice, coy, and yet confident. Sun, radiant with novel passion, slowly embraced the rose in its warmth and was about to plant a  kiss on its tender petal lips, to drink the drops of dew on them ...when you came on to the window....

You, slowly pulling the curtains and then pushing the pans, yawning with half opened eyes; loose dark flaxen tresses floating in the wind, that had rushed in to soak in your fragrance, strands wrapping around your face with playful naughtiness, and some, probably the most passionate of them, kissing your moist lips with a haughty passion; you pushing them aside with a tender rebuke, and they coming back again, and again, as if only source of nourishing life they knew (like infant knows only mother’s breast) was tender essence of your pink lips.

After opening the window you stood there resting against the wall. Your sleeveless white top filled by trespassing air endowed you even more, silk of your night shorts completely merging in the silk of your dusky skin, startled the looker with a amazing vision, till, somehow, the relative roughness of its texture gave it away against the dusky smoothness of your lissom smoky thighs. As you opened the window the fragrance of your pristine youth seeped in to garden like laughter of a baby filling the air, and it soothed the morning even more; the round smoothness of your bare arms, the chiselled sharp drop of your nose, the intoxicating drowsiness of your still sleepy eyes, the simmer of heat-of-life on you lips, gentle heaving of your chest, and, oh! that sharp curve between your hips and back when resting against the wall.....Sun was mesmerised.

Having seen a billion mornings, sun for the first time was seized with this intense desire- not to melt this drop of dew he had just seen oozing on the window.....not to drink it, but to just watch it. Sun left the rose alone, and most tenderly built a protective aura around you. You, still standing on the window, in that endless morning of my imagination, and sun merging and radiating in and from you in an unprecedented softness...

That morning rose learned to envy....

-Pulastya

A Face

Her skin glazed like porcelain in the colour of beaten pure gold- buxom radiance moving with an inaudible feline walk; movement of her body minimum, yet she swayed in most feminine manner- giving rhythm to a dancing flower, a flowing river, a wave riding the ocean, or a pulsating galaxy.

Her eyebrows, perfect brush stokes of a master calligrapher, a gently curved thin line to infinity- the name of god in Arabic.

Slanted dewey eyes glowing with soft wetness; two black bodies oozing low wavelength heat, a savoury tender warmth from a heart on fire with passion, overflowing from eyes.

In themselves those eyes smiled with a naughty and yet indifferent shine, inviting, but taking no responsibility for any danger lurking behind them.

Her lips were without a hint of smile, full, curvy, luscious and ripe, but pursed in a warning.

She lured and mystified at the same time, like a bait!

-Pulastya

Desire Vs Object of Desire

And I always thought that fragrance was what separated the God and the Origamist; hope you are not treading on thin ice here calling creations of God paper flowers...and, even if they are, the fact is irrelevant for the admirer, for he bows to his desire, not to the object of his desire- for he wields the power of imagination to elevate the object to any level. He craves for thirst, not water; with power of thirst he can create water any where, even in desert. As long as he abstains from consuming the product of his imagination mirage and reality do not differ for him, empowering him to elevate reality. The pinnacle of proximity and abstinence is what reveal highest form of beauty (true admirer knows this), for beauty is nothing but the tension in senses because you are so close and yet do not touch. One touch of finger and the decay begins. To "want" is glory of beauty, to "have" it is its death. Beauty begins and ends with delirium, and a touch is beginning of its end.

-Pulastya

To a makeup artist:

Makeup is what makes fantasies real; and cosmetics are arrows of God of sensual love in the hands of a mortal artist.  But, only worthy artist can rise to the status of Cupid, so more power to you. Beauty, as they say, is nothing but what brings joy to those who have eyes to behold it. Makeup gives a form to the beauty that fits the fantasies simmering in the eyes of beholder (his), and gift of sanguine self belief to the beheld (her).

I, however, in your case can think of a pitfall;  knowing that dominant colour of feminine is green,  how in the world the women that you turned into fantasies would ever leave without a tinge of envy and self doubt  if they start to compare themselves with the artist (you).

-Pulastya

On Evil

Evil acts end up doing more for the world than mere good words. They, if nothing else (not withstanding the fact that mostly it’s difficult to find absolute evil; and necessary condition for evil to exist is that it must exists only in others!), make evil evident, and thus caution and awaken the sufferers from a condition where they are vulnerable to it. Good words, on the other hand, are a mere noise, manifesting the anxiety of weak observer.

On Character

The character is the empirically recognised, persistent, and unchangeable nature of an individual will (Schopenhauer). Consistency (therefore predictability) of behaviour, independent of consequences entailed in that behaviour, defines the character.

In public discourse ordinary character is distinct from extraordinary because latter gives preference to general good over personal good. Though both of these are acceptable with a value difference, what constitutes bad character here is having no consistency of behaviour at all.

One’s action are predicated on one’s character, and one’s image is a consequence of one’s actions. So character is precursor to image. The genesis and effectiveness of image lies in its communicability. More consistent is the behaviour, clearer the image, therefore, more communicable it is. In public life this communicability is most important for your views to be wide spread (acceptability of views, however, will depend on how closely they are aligned with prevalent acceptable norms, or expectations of a group.)

Now the times have changed. The advent of mass media has freed the image from the bounds of character. There is no need to grow an image organically through practiced behaviour, now it is possible to manufacture it. Because, the exposure is not direct anymore, but through a medium, and this medium is manipulatable. So much so that it is possible to manipulate not only the projection but also the receiver, i.e. psycho- biological capacity of humans through psychedelic repeated exposure, preying on limited capacity of humans to analyse and understand beyond what is obvious to their senses.

Having to go back to history and mythology for role models only perpetuate the problem. The role models coming from there are not real-world (in the current times) and a challenge to relate to. Also, over a period to time, in order to serve the purpose of those writing the history or propagating the myth, these role model invariably turns larger than life. These heroes of past are rarely flawed, but in real life -in present- they always are. Flawed hero are also complicated to understand, and always lose in competition with simplistic allure of a perfect hero, who, by the way, is impossible to emulate. Allure of a perfect hero gives more power to manufacturers of image, for it (a perfect hero) can only me manufactured.

A world now so finely structured that it is driven only by ideas and thoughts, and much reduced physicality, is bound to be dimensionless; and strange, too, at first. Like a dream. Like “ The Matrix”. In such a world  image supersedes the character, for character can not exist as a mere idea, image does. As the possibility of directly observable action reduces the need for character becomes redundant, replaced by (manufactured) image.

-Pulastya

On Nehru

Nehru, a thinking man. Speaks with depth on the issues of history, Socialism, Marxism and philosophy of life. The most erudite of our prime ministers so far, by far.  I wonder how intellectual capacity dwindled so much in the descendants. The interview is more about “Nehru-the individual” and he seems to revel in it, and in  his perception (may be true also!) of his value for India (opening exchange). This interview was after 10-11 years after independence, when the euphoria of independence still lingered perhaps, giving country and the man a feeling of inflated self worth; war with China and subsequent defeat were still in the future; the sleaze of politics in a democratic setup hadn’t breached his aura yet.  I feel sad thinking about his last days though. He saw his professed idea of world and life failing him with his own eyes; his chance of creating a very individual legacy as the builder of independent India was severely dented by this failure, pushing him back to the pantheons of freedom fighters for securing a place in history, which was a crowded place. The man was one of those who could project the world as a beautiful place-a romantic (Bajpai could be another one). Such men reach the top of a democratic setup rarely, and only by accident of history. And, always a turbulent aftermath succeeds them, for thoughts can only creat a masque to cover the reality but can not subdue it. A patch turned in to a garden in wilderness is always reclaimed by the jungle once gardener leaves, in his case it happed sooner.

Existential Contemplation

Caution: to start to think “ who am l!”’ and “ why am I!” is a sign of over-grown and under-utilised intellect. It’s (this line of thought exploration) like substance abuse which gives only a high but is of no use in real  world.

For, more you start to understand more you get alienated (despair is the reward of wisdom, for flow of all things is predecided and towards decay, and understanding this comes with understanding that one can’t do anything about it...which results in despair. In many ways ignorance is truely a bliss!), and most everyday actions start seeming superficial to you. Turning you in to a fatalist.

You may possibly chose other ways in real world to keep your mind engaged to prevent it from becoming self destructive (by engaging in such existential thoughts)-like those kings who having built a large armies are constantly at war to prevent it from turning inwards.

-Pulastya

Haiku

approval tempts
masochist souls
or the guilty ones

-Pulastya

Haiku

breaching equanimity
through guilt holes
words hurt

-Pulastya

Existential contemplation

Loneliness, solitude- emotional, and physical states of disconnecting with people around you. Both, mostly, are independent of each other. Loneliness is cauterising the wounds, nerve by nerve, for closure; solitude helps in paying attention to something bubbling inside you to get a life of its own. Great lover chases (and ends up with!) loneliness, great poet craves solitude. But the greatest lover and poet is but one who seeks and gets both, loneliness and solitude.

-Pulastya

Irony

Irony!

The only place in the whole world
Unspoilt by human touch
Remains hidden
In the depth of human heart... 

A whole ecosystem of wild feelings thrives in that depth; 

And, can thrive only in that depth!
Away from right wrong,
Away from moral amoral,
Away from cruel light that exposes indiscriminately,
Without weeding of any sort;

A weed garden!
Where nothing is valued for flower or fruits,
But, only for will to grow.
Truest relation of
Soil and seed,
Heart and feel.

-Pulastya

To woman I once knew

You had strange conception of man!
As if men of this world had nothing better to do, But, to ignore you or adore you;
First half you wished to destroy for impudence, 
And the other half for feeding to your vanity.

If it was for you to ordain,
They might exist only as useful insects...
O, primeval woman!

-Pulastya

Ode to the coffee shop situated near where I used to work

Never missed the place,
But will always remember it with love-
An oasis In multi-storey desert, 
Moon of the netherworld ....
Only smell of life was this coffee,
When I drifted among the walking dead...

-Pulastya

Yaaden

कल रात जो पी थी दो घूँट तुम्हारी आँखें
अभी उतरी नहीं है.......
पैमाने ले गयी, सूरूर छोड़ गयी हो,

मैं ड्रेसर पर बैठा हूँ सिर्फ़ तुम्हारा चेहरा ओढ़े
ले जाना कभी आकर........
आइने में तुम अपना अक्स छोड़ गयी हो ?

-पुलस्तय

Chhoti si Nadi

कल शाम प्रोमोनेड़ पर,
तुम्हारे साथ चलते चलते,
पर्वत था मैं, और तुम
ऐक चंचल छोटी सी नदी,

छू गयी मगर जब तुम्हारी कलाई
अनजाने में मेरे हाथ से,
रगों मैं दौड़ पड़ा लहूँ,
फूटीं कुछ कपोले
पत्थर के भी ख़्वाब में,
और, आँखो मैं वो तुम्हारी जाने क्या था
रूप, जवानी या अलहड़पन से बना था
या फिर उमड़ते जीवन का नशा था
झूम उठे थे क़दम मेरे भी
मैं ज़िंदा हूँ अभी, मैं ज़िंदा हूँ अभी
पल भर तो लगा था।

-पुलस्तय

Exploring, More Touching than Knowing

Though I do not know if it was deliberate, we have been spending lot of time together lately. More than enough to suspect a tacit consent. Over past few weeks we met frequently, even twice in one week, and spent long hours, some times 4-6 hours, together either at a coffee shop or in restaurants. To me, these hours always seemed shorter afterwards, as if time has gone by tiptoeing, rather than thumping its heavy feet on my consciousness. The time spent with her seemed perfect replica of happy moments, but I resisted recognising it as such to keep the frothing beast of guilt in my conscience pacified. For, I was not sure if I deserved them - for the reasons I can’t say here. I feel little more eligible now, still unfairly though.

These meeting did not have any deeper intellectual significance. We discussed many things ranging from fashion sense of people to, sometimes- once may be, mathematics; latter, specially, being my moment of glory as it led her to express appreciation with a shine of genuine awe in her eyes. I really liked those few rare seconds of her complete intellectual surrender while discussing mathematics, for discussing everything else her never daunted self-belief and confident tone always made up for the gap in her understanding of subject being discussed. 

She insisted on being equal partner in these discussions; discussions would always get stretched unnecessarily as both of us competed to have the last word. I would be the one to give up eventually, when either discussion went in to a loop for too long, or when I felt that my argument was thinning to the level of her’s. But, once in a while, with quite regular frequency, she would surprise me by saying something which I would not be expecting her to know at all. One such time she quoted Proust from “In Search of Lost Time” and shook me enough to raise the level of my expectation from her, only to erode it to the original level over next few days. 

Mostly, we discussed office colleagues who both of us knew, or, sometimes, individuals who only one of us knew, like my relatives or her’s. Their personal lives, whatever we knew of it directly or having heard from other, were bluntly dissected- why they behaved the way they did, how (and why!) they dressed the way they did, their situations in life, their crushes and affairs. Majority of the discussions were frivolous and we, basically, passed judgment on people in the name of psychoanalysing them. What was interesting, however, was that there was no sense of judging each other between us. Both of us were eager to participate in any discussion, however shallow, as long as it was a reason for us to be together and interact. Not intellectual, but for us these meetings seemed to have a deeper emotional significance. 

She bought coffee for us, and at meals took charge of ordering food items. Always ordering a different item on menu, never repeating the one that we had ordered in past. Not even the ones we had agreed to have liked a lot. Each of the new items she would admire for taste or presentation but would never repeated it the next time. Her obsession with “exploring” always filled me with a strange sensation, leading me to imagine my self to be one of the items on the menu! Then I would know, soon she would get over me too. For, the charm of exploring is in touching and knowing the unknown. Much more in touching, than knowing!

-Pulastya

Love Slavery

Heart filled with love
Is the worst kind of slave-
Slave, with conscience carrying no burden;
Slave, who turns slavery into a religion.

Love is toughest and longest of chains,
Go easy on love, those who want their freedom retained.

-Pulastya

On Mathematics

Osip Mandelstam once said that true poetry is the one which can not be paraphrased. If so, then there is nothing more poetic than the language of mathematics (and by extension physics..); one truth, one path, one language; not a word less or more. 

Man’s reply to what God did at Tower of Babel.....

Nothing is more beautiful than a page filled with differential and integral signs, pi and theta...and, to top it up, a sign wave graph....

-Pulastya

Paradise

Your scent-
When I almost made love to you,
Will blossom
As my last thought,
When I die, 
In to a paradise...

-Pulastya

Life...

Perhaps
I don’t live just in myself,
Perhaps
I live in the lives of others,
Perhaps
My life is all these lives put together....

Whenever
I extricate myself from life of someone
A part of me dies....

Then
Rest of me uses pain
As an antidote to paralysis....

Turning me into a poet.....

-Pulastya

Paradise..

Your scent-
When I almost made love to you,
Will blossom
As my dying thought
In to a paradise...

-Pulastya

You, in me....

What I feel for you seems reduced
When described as love- for
love is for things external.
You have seeped into me such that
impossible for me to “be” without you.

Like earth and rain,
Once they have met they are one- inseparable, indistinguishable.
If forced away from each other,
Earth is left parched,
And rain is mere vapour lost in the transparent abyss of air.

-Pulastya

Some Thoughts on Photography..

In art form a photograph is an independent reality, not a slave of the reality whose image it captures. Its independence is seeded in the fact that it is not a true image, only a perspective in a particular moment. A ‘true image' photograph is an impossibility, because true image can not be separated from its reality either by space or time. In both separations image ceases to be true at the very moment of separation, for their flow into the future takes different paths-their similarity starts diverging.

In fact, the moment idea of a picture is conceived the path and destinies of the picture and subject begin to diverge. In conceiving itself factors like camera angle, lens, aperture diameter, exposure time, time of the day (the day itself! Rainy day, sunny day etc!), extra lighting, and focal point all play a transformational role: they change the reality of subject in favour of the reality of picture; and, also, capture only a part of the true (whole) image.

Also, ’True to reality’ itself as an idea is an oxymoron. Something that doesn’t exist. Can’t exist. For, there is no reality without a perspective. If it was otherwise then there would be no distinction of “good photograph” and “bad photograph” of the same subject (reality). How you capture it makes that distinction. ‘How’ is the perspective- a distortion that work as a knife to scrap away the image from reality.

So, then, what is reality? Reality is a hint, a clue, a stimulus, a signal to be sensed with our five senses for arranging our thought. This arranging is important for that creates a semblance of living. Anger, fear, love, hate all are arrangement of thoughts in our head stimulated by hints that we call reality, and our perception of it.

A beautiful photograph is an amalgamation of the view, aesthetics, and emotions. “What” to capture dissolved in to “how” to capture and “why”, these coupled with “how much” to capture and “when” are the decisions to be made, which keeps the mind of photographer in a state of constant reviewing of thoughts evoked by the view in sight. It (this constant reviewing) is like first growing an ‘eye of mind’ to find beauty, and then leading biological eyes through a training where they learn from the ‘eye of mind’; and deepen, broaden, soften their understanding of beauty. The “eye of mind” is the emotional capability of brain which does the emotional referencing of things in sight, giving them a meaning, which biological eyes can not do. An ant carrying a load ten times it body weight and struggling up a wall is not a sight of visual beauty, but makes up for immense emotional beauty-for ant’s will-to-live despite life being so hard on it(from the human perspective of physical labour). So, despite the individual ugliness of the subject (ant, and the carcass of a dead moth perhaps!) it would make for a good picture for its emotional content; if the struggle part is suitably highlighted by capturing the relative size of ant and its load and the height it has covered, along with capturing, possibly, the distance it has yet to go. And, that will decide the “how much” (of what is in sight)to capture part.

-Pulastya

You..

Triggered as a sensation,
Grew into a sentiment,
Living as a memory:
you are part of me, always.

-Pulastya

stri Aur Samay

 कलेजे़ से लगा के रखेगा तुझे
तो वक़्त पत्थर हो जाएगा,
ऐक बहता हुआ दरियाँ है
फिर ये कैसे नयी नस्लों को जतायेगा,
वक़्त की बंजर सतह पर
ऐक फूल सी बहती हो बस तुम,
बीज का वरदान दे कर
हर दौर को बसंत ऋतु कर देती हो तुम,
रहेगा तेरा वजूद रोशन
तो ही समय रवानी पायेगा,
बिन कोख़ तेरी, ऐ स्त्री!
वक़्त मर जाएगा।

-पुलस्तय

Not to Think About Her:

It is already a doomed effort not to think about her. The effort itself makes the endeavour impossible; for, the harder one tries to forget, the more one is reminded. Trying to forget becomes an act of remembering in reverse; more painful too.

And these thoughts about her, even as something intangible, are physically destructive; no worldly action is required by one to implode of them.

They are narcotics which enslave and disconnect brain from body, rendering  body nonfunctional.

And, here, it goes a step further. Brain, in case of narcotics, still allows body to function as a conduit for ingesting of substance, but here, since thoughts themselves are narcotics, body has no utility at all.

Narcotics are assimilated by body, only resultant impulse is sent to the brain. Thus, for that impulse brain still remains dependent on body, forcing the effect to remain bound by physical laws: attaining peak and then fading, letting body reconnect with brain and become conscious of its needs again. Of course, serving the addiction still remains its top priority by far; yet, however improbable, a path to salvation still remains open in curing the body.

But, thinking-about-her has no such constraints, and intensity rises and rises till mind become one with her, and body is lost irrecoverably.

There is no saving from it, unless an external rescue intervenes shaking out of the singularity of passion for her. And when that happens withdrawal symptoms are stunning. There is no recovery, or guilt; but sole, and unlimited, desire to jump back into the abyss again, to feel that freedom from gravity in the free fall again.

Further, augmented by knowledge that body and mind will disintegrate much before the final thud, when bottom is hit, such an end seems even more alluring. It’s not just free from pain, but is a beautiful trap for consciousness, where  a dream slowly melts into darkness and darkness itself becomes the vision of dream.

Darkness and dream merging into one and eternally eliminating the need to wake up.

It is a journey to a point at distant horizon, where sleep and awareness have no separate existence, where they become one and the same.

-Pulastya

You...

You are loud,
You are aggressive,
You hit rough and hard;
You startle.

But,

You bring calm,
Something one feels on knowing you a little,
Beyond that initial fear- which is, perhaps, your way of priming the senses for up coming joy,
Joy that pervades the soul
long after you have left.

You nourish the senses, you nourish the soul.

You are like a thunderstorm....

-Pulastya

Kiss

A kiss, is the shortest path to divine,
Two souls merging into one;
Passing from the burning mouth of lover,
And tenderly picked by lips of the other;
Bodies dissolving, and what remains just floats,
Rising and rising and rising, reaching the gods.

This a so odd,
Seen against the teachings of virtue and vice,
In pairs, our souls uniting with god,
Through the act of our bodies.

-Pulastya

O Sensation!

In a rash moment you were gone, with passion running high in veins
and overflowing from every pore of body, you played with me dangerous games.

Seeking thrill of intimacy more intense, in the game of love displaying coyness;
you wanted me to come chasing after, seek you harder;
begging and pleading, to placate, and so, you barred me with a barricade,

I, on the other hand, was brimming over with you,
raging passion consumed inhaled air too;
I felt deprived of breath, and it mattered,
instead of dissolving, I was shattered.

What is love but a state of imagination,
nothing enlivens it more than the fire of passion.
Desire, the ardent and the eternal,
It’s divine posing as carnal;
The beast,
At the same time blinded, strong, and rampant,
on a rampage chasing after your scent.

Breathless and on fire, I nearly died, and you I blamed;
never turning back though, refusing to be tamed.
And yet, memories of that elevated state persist,
otherwise I have no reason to exist.

Though there are thoughts that engulf me:
Why not just burn, rather than be?

(Years passed. My solitude still whispers the word into my ear. Magical, which makes things bow to me- touch me only with their most tender core; vibrant pulse of language, and meaning “life”. A delight, I can feel sizzling on my tongue whenever I say it. It's your name.)

O Sensation! lay on me you claim,
what beats inside my heart is your name.

Your name, a residual fire burning in me, a remnant of how I was aflame with you.

Your name, key to all my memories, a summation of me.

Your name, your absence walking with me in your image.

Name, the infinite standing between absence and death.

-Pulastya