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