Nightfall

The jet black hair of mother nature, set loose to tantalize
The average Joe's star studded getaway
The only time, when lackadaisical is virtuous
The altar for the primal side to decivilize

The darkside of the yin yang, a day is
The accomplice to the daily lunar nepotism
The seductress to the lurking alter ego 
The potion for posterity to paranormal myth

The pasture that reaps dreams
The light at the end of the tunnel, day is
The enigmatic inebriation that is eternal
to the wanderlust who is nocturnal 

Dad- The colossus in my living room

This post is an excerpt from a tribute piece I wrote for my dad on the eve of his birthday.He's the Sun in my horizon, that I've often taken for granted, content with the illumination of the tubelite in my living room .

Dads are like tall monuments, the greatness of which needs to be seen from a distance and heard from a prudent stranger. This is me, writing about the colossus my dad is, from a objective distance as a prudent stranger.

 During my delivery,the maternity ward witnessed two births. One was me covered in organic goo and other my dad. He was a self made man,every inch of him.Having an educational foundation in Tamil medium from an agrarian village which was waking up to the invention of telephones and speed posts, here he was overseeing the birth of his first progeny at an uptown nursing home at the heart of the city as a practicing Chartered Accountant .


Shy of English and urbanization, he had walked into a city as a youngster inundated by poverty with a family that looked up to him.He had fire in his belly,instead of food during a lot of the initial days of his career.His growth through the thick and thin of things had made him a more humble person than proud.


Dad's a multifaceted man,who's got no pretense about flaunting it with lesser mortals around.I've seen him as a kid and a teenager raise two houses from a blueprint level to a civil monument that had the neighbours salivate at their elaborate detailing. I've never been very excited about being around mortar,cement and semi-finished structures with sweaty labourers clocking painful man-hours all my life.But my indifference to the nitty gritties of construction as a process hasn't stopped me from admiring the authoritative connoisseur my dad was.

I've always been able to afford the leverage of being a passive participant to the proceedings at home, thanks to his relentless contribution to everything at home ranging from fixing an electrical anomaly at the bathroom to a motivational soliloquy to a crest fallen member at home.

If altruism was a cherubic south Indian who quoted Vivekananda at drop of a hat,it would pretty much look my dad.People are of two kinds,givers and takers,he's of the former tribe.He has always been unconditional, his habit of giving has never been contingent on the credibility of the receiver be it advise or a timely assistance. As much I respect this,I've had an issue or two with this unabashedly saccharine side by virtue of which he has been taken for a ride by some. Some of my grey shades I realize, were fashioned as an antidote to the white shades I've disagreed with in his personality. It takes an extremely strong person like my dad to be genuinely good irrespective of the stimuli faced, I'm neither one nor do I intend to go there someday.

Dad and me are dissimilar people from diabolically different school of thoughts who ensure the house is never short of fireworks and heat.Most of our altercations don't end with logic as,more than fact we tend to clash at ego levels. His is laidback and assured, mine is brash and pushy.that both of us tend to get personal more often than not.


When ensconced in solitude,I've repented my modus operandi and the vocabulary employed with him at proving a point that more often than not my conscience has itched me.His intention en-wrapped in harsh words have dawned upon me like medicinal effect of a bitter pill,hours after a conflict.
Life would keep hurling myriad situations at any given individual through various stages

,I'm no exception to this.All I can try is to be as thankful as him when they turn out favourable and be half as graceful when they don't.

Pasture of Dreams

I had this target to earn a certain amount of income by a given date, a stiff ask. Never the less, It wouldn't let me sleep in complacence. Sometime in the evening I had gone to this movie to unwind, a no brainer. It starred a feisty actress, bronze-complexioned with luscious lips. She was the only memento I took home from the movie apart from the digested popcorn enroute my intestine. I had a rendezvous with her the same night in my mindspace at my favourite coffee joint.

Which brings me to the question, are dreams our wake up calls to the realm of reality or the distraction from the same?

Since I'm a self confessed moviebuff who could gain weight around his hips with just a diet of tastefully made movies, most of my anecdotes would come from them. So much so that I could say that they've styled my Emotional Quotient, transcending beyond a gratuitous source of inspiration
.
Coming back to the topic, there was this gem of a movie by the name, Kakka Muttai(Crow's Egg) I happened to watch a fortnight back. Must say it was a rare connoisseur's delight, that appealed to the purists while holding the hoi polloi at sway, hoots & wolf whistles testimony to that.
This movie is a story of two urchins from an impoverished slum, who make a living out of collecting coal pilfered on train tracks. They happen to come across a newly opened pizza joint at a neighbourhood nearby and are completely consumed by the visual of strands of cheese stretching with every slice pulled out, shown in endless loops on TV. From aisles southwards, their new found love seems at an inaccessible altar northwards of prosperity, notwithstanding which they salivate at the experience, vicariously so.
Kids that they are, see means overlooking the constraints scattered across the path to their dream. This dream gives them many a sleepless nights, takes them on a life altering journey that tests their desperation, while questioning their character all at the same time. In the end, they find themselves pulling out a slice of pizza, with strands of cheese in a dramatic climax.

Which brings me to the point, a dream is not something which we see when we sleep, but the one that doesn't let us sleep. It is sometimes the soul's reckoning, while being an anchor that doesn't let us stray when in pursuit of a well founded passion.

While life as it is, is yardsticked by one's intelligence, dream is an extrapolative space, with a frontier that stretches to the tenacity of his imagination. The manifestations that we come across in the realm of our dreams, could be of two types-aspirations or affectations. The aspirations could be a product of unattainable desires,lacunae and constraints or a conjuring to a whiff of fresh ideas. While the affectations are often, exaggerated expansions of fear and guilt.

It is the way one harnesses his dreams, that defines the person that he is. It could be used to up the threshold, push boundaries or leverage the sub-conscious to think out of the box, for one thing that ran across as a thread connecting individuals who created eternal music, timeless paintings, inundating monuments that stood the test of times proudly was the fact that they were dreamers.

The lesser mortals, the lackadaisical ones use it as an escapist getaway, to rent time in a candy coated space with sensory agendas that were nipped before their sleep by reality, to wake up to an empty life again, with dried up saliva by the lip and wet pajamas as testament to the fun they had last night,

The ability to dream is each man's knife and mirror, to cook food or slit throat with it shows the person one is. While the image that appears on the mirror, God or Devil, is corroborative of the person within. 
Dreams happen in the dichotomy of reality & possibility.His effort to act on it makes one,a Dreamer or an Achiever 

Solitude

With the sanctum sanctorum within

I looked for gods in temples

The gravity that makes me grounded

The compass that points to the self in a sea of people

The solace from commonplace

The mirror before which I comb my self respect

The realm my parallel thoughts refract

The necessary taciturn every relation needs

The chisel that sculpts my individuality

The corner I ensconce to introspect

The chamber that embalms my soul

My gratuitous twenty fifth hour

The sky that belittles my ego

To another novice, loneliness

To me, Solitude

OK Kanmani- field notes of a romantic

What starts as a vagabond fling with no strings attached seems to grow gravity along with firm ground beneath, with the enigmatic charm of curiosity metamorphosing to organically settled chemistry.
For the commitment-phobic lead pair, who start of being content on grazing from fringes of the unison between two sexes, the digression from carnal shallows to soulful depths of bonding happens collaterally.

Like the bedrock of civilization found in the heart of a forest,OK Kanmani is an oxymoronic catharsis replete with incongruous intentions and manifestations.about an unlikely journey two got along to embark on, to the one that got them along in the end.

Adi & Tara get acquainted to each other in an uncanny scenario as fleeting images on either side of a railway track. From there on, the couple smitten by each other employ every cliche in the dating manual to get to know each other from coffee shop flirtations to small talks in public transport.

Leveraged by the freedom of an alien city, under the vigil of just their collective conscience, the scene of action culminates in obvious eventuality on the bed, with precarious vows exchanged to not traverse into the uncharted territory of romance.With this make shift relation at the helm, they decide to live in together in the PG accommodation of Ganapathy Uncle & Bhavani aunty.

This elderly couple, that fell in love & got married decades back personifies old school romance in turbulent times, with the husband parenting his wife suffering from Alzheimer's with unabashed enthusiasm of a high school crush.
So we have a young couple that loathe the very institution of marriage and another, basking in the evening of a successful one under the same roof.

This gradually leads to a concentric circle of endearment, with the audience vicariously reveling in the non-committal space of Adi & Tara, while Adi & Tara seem to sub-consciously be enamored by the old fashioned virtues of Ganapthy Uncle & Bhavani Aunty.

The charm of the relation founded on epidermal level pursuits seems to be wading away,as the young couple's respective careers threatens to drift them in different directions, with an avalanche of inseparability contingent to breach the shores of romantic indifference.
While, the romance of yore between the elderly couple seems to be growing from strength to strength, with the progress in the level of Alzheimer's, ironically.

At this stage, Bhavani Aunty goes amiss on a wet evening. This results in  Adi & Tara searching for her with the city held siege by torrential downpour.It is this conspiracy of extraneous circumstances,that leads to the confession of their love for each other. This is put across poetically in a metaphorical way, with the discovery of their love for each other coinciding with that of the lost Bhavani Aunty. The story ends in their wedding, with the universe conspiring to harvest love from seeds of lust sown by them.

The movie subtly reiterates the fact that soulmates are like magnets, for as much resilience as they might exhibit to be away, the force of attraction would eventually take over.  

There is this song "Malargal Kaeten" in the movie which epitomizes the theme of the movie, from the point of view of a lover enchanted by the paradox of  her needs being over-fulfilled every time, with her seeing every need as a mean to her loved one finally.

Malargal Kaettaen vanamae thandhanai. thanneer kaettaen amirtham thandhanai. edhai naan ketpin unnaye tharuvaai Kaattil tholaindhen vazhiyaai vandhanai. irulil tholaindhaen oliyaai vandhanai edhanil tholaindhaal.. neeye varuvaai. Pallam veelndhaen sigaram serthanai. vellam veelndhaen karayil serthanai. edhanil veelndhaal... unnidam serppaai.

I just asked for flowers, you gave me a garden. I asked for water you gave me nectar What I should ask for ? to give yourself. I got lost in the forest, you came as a guiding path. I got lost in the dark, you came as a guiding light. where should I lose myself so that you will come. I fell in the pit you took me to the peak. I fell in the flood you reached me to the shore. In what  should I fall? To reach you.

Decoding God

He bats so well, to me he's the God of cricket. I love his songs, God of music.I could let my house be burgled when he's acting, God of acting he must be.The motif goes on endlessly. 

God has got to be the most abused idea or word around.Left alone to a dogmatic society strung on Utopian ideals could be the most effective means of abuse.

Were men from our times or from an inaccessible long time ago who displayed great character under immense duress or leveraged their prowess to toe the line of altruism fondly referred to as gods by those with a penchant for drama. Was it the choices that they made or were they the chosen ones of providence? Did the word assign hallow around the head or was it used to describe celestial beings with hallow around the head? Did God percolate to poetry and folklore or were they instruments to rhapsodize the concept to the hoi polloi?
There's another popular school of thought which says reaching the abode of God is the bedrock of salvation.
That leaves me with the question-Is God a designation or a destination?

Was the famous tale of Ramayana devised to spread a way of life or was it an impressionist tale of a man,a dutiful prince, a doting husband and the travails he underwent to preserve a bouquet of ideals?
In that case, how does a staunch Rama devotee with extra marital affairs galore, compare as opposed to a faithful husband, an atheist who doesn't endorse you?

That brings me to the question- To idolize or idealize you?

We as a race, seem to prefer convenience over correctness. For what would explain our over-romanticizing of the anecdotes and personalities contained in scriptures over the virtues and philosophies they flag-shipped. To me God has always been a metaphor, misunderstood. Scriptures, cash cows. 

When one shines the cage more passionately than feed the bird it encages, the cage glitters with the dying bird with efflux of time. 

His grandfather died over-speeding and a cat happened to cross his path. The son obediently took his dad's words and never drove when a cat crossed his path. Who's fault is it when the son died over-speeding , the dad in a fiduciary capacity with erroneous inference or the son with the blind faith?

As a creator, do you like the concept of blind faith or would you rather prefer men prone to reasons and consequences? Blind faith is a two sided knife, which could harm the wielder and the wielded,while a society characterized by too much reasoning would be volatile and disobedient.

There was a wonderful septuagenarian who passed away recently. I really looked upto the man's altruist lifestyle. Now would I be justified in taking people with me to cities that have housed him in various phases of his life and probably build a lavish pantheon in his place of birth or am I supposed to imbibe his virtues in my way of life to carry forward his legacy?

If you feel the latter is a better option to immortalize one's personality, why sanctify monuments and birth places over teachings of an Individual. Being from India, I know the political connotations and the carnage that ensued over a birthplace and a monument. The misplaced righteousness blurs the judgement of a blind endorser who's taken it upon himself to protect a tangible extension of his ideology from an perpetrating ideology, flattering him to believe his fanaticism to be altruism.

An evolved society with a faith founded on archaic principles from an bygone era, could be likened to the quandary of a grown up man with a heart that seized to grow beyond his toddler days.

So what would you prefer more hypothetically, A demography of god-fearing or god-loving people?
A society that seeks solace in monuments and sees Gods in stones or one that relies on labour and love and looks up to good men as heroes, which one would you revel in?

That brings me to my last question-
Are you the means to achieve a higher purpose or the end itself?

Together Apart

 Born in the dichotomy of inhaling and exhaling is life. For how would intake of oxygen seem relevant, without the punctuated venting of carbon dioxide. A bonding is as special as the tenure of separation that preceded it.

Our times seems to be characterised by the epidemic of overdone togetherness. where we see a couple invade righteously into each other's personal space in the name of love. Ironically, love stories of the yore that happened over correspondence with civil wars at the back drop,seemed to have endured the test of changing times in a better fashion as opposed to relations nurtured by Whatsapp and Skype,set in a world with a rapidly shrinking radius,
That was an era when platonic was revered fervently, a time where the lover's picture in the wallet was purgatory enough unlike our Instagram times.

There is something magical about separation in a relation. It makes you miss the aura of your partner, long for their body's warmth, vicariously live those cherished moments in the mind while realizing the way they completed you.
While the time together might tempt you to take your partner for granted, the time away would more often than not make you realize their value. Togetherness might breed complacency, while solitude would lend respect to a relation.

Move a foot away from a tree, you would see the tree better. Move a few more feet,you may see the garden it is a part of and move a few more feet, you would see the entire house it belongs to.
The figurative distance from your partner lends objectivity to your relationship. You tend to appreciate facets in them, which you might not have been able to with the forced proximity.

We are what we dream of, what we aspire and what we stand for. One's individuality is his signature.A relationship is nutrition for his soul, for it inspires him to look upto another day with purpose.
A crisis of a relationship born on the death of one's individuality can be likened to the predicament of a person so overwhelmed by his vehicle to embark on a journey with it.

When people around us are succumbing to romance or marriage,  we are no exception to eventuality unless we display a unlikely dogged resilience. So neither would we be the first or the last to be in a relation with a person we love. So the lure to over-sanctify the institution of marriage or romance from being a designation in the visiting card, to our visiting place itself would naturally inundate us.

We could be the mutt that reveled under the feet of it's master, content with the jurisdiction of the kennel or be the birds that fly miles away to reunite at a sanctuary. Whether we want a relationship that is a kennel or a sanctuary,have a partner for a master or a fellow adventurer, be a myopic mutt or a adventurous bird, the choice is ours. 

Us

"A friend in deed,is a friend in need" is what I believed in. For me what makes an acquaintance from school or college special is the number of activities we both have excitedly been part of. For what is a friendship without enough anecdotes to share?

There are lot of them who would say things like we went to the same school,our college bus route was similar or we were neighbours when probed about the origin of their friendships. This is nothing but flattery of acquaintanceship that reveled in locational-convenience.So in these cases it was more of coincidence conspiring to put them in a congenial radius than the spirit of comradeship.

But this guy and me have been partners in crime since the evening of our teenage. Our chemistry shot up northwards and our bonhomie was booming with every misadventurous pursuit, with private and public properties being collateral(in a miniscular scale). Like me he was an aficionado of movies, so we had another indulgence in common to discover each other in the process. As we grew up sanity grew along over our free spirit. Like urbanisation eating into forest, this civil side was mowing into our wild side.The frequency of our meetings kept growing scant, with the distance between our residences remaining at a constant stone throw length.

There was a phase were he would wait for me to call, not knowing that I was expecting the same thing.I wouldn't say he was entirely at fault for things remaining unrequitted between us, given that my ego had grown up to constitute 30% of my BMI. From a friendship which was once regulated by heart and instinct,it was withering away into indifference with brain and ego looming large. I could see the brotherhood turning commonplace with us meeting up on sunday morning cricket matches and birthday eve gatherings.. It's not like there were no initiatives to end the tepidit
y from our sides, but somehow it was beyond the starting trouble.From tangible presence in each other's scheme of things, we had turned into a comforting presence in the backdrop with vicarious acknowledgement of an erstwhile bond.

With every reality check life throws at you, you figure out who your real circle are. My break up happened,things were a little rough. I couldn't afford to be as high handed as before, with the humbling duress making me a little vulnerable. He was the first guy I called as soon as I called it off. That's when I knew his significance in my life. He was my shoulder when I was unstable, my shrink when I was getting woefully  nostalgic at a drop of a hat.That phase startled me out of my insulation of pretense and calculation.

That's when we had gone for this very popular movie. Midway into the movie I got my nostalgia bout yet again. It was over-whelming to try watching the movie beyond that as I was suffocating from thoughts that had breached the parallel realm.I sprang out of the movie hall teary-eyed, to mitigate embarrassment.Within a matter of few moments he was there by my side ,ready to leave.

We couldn't leave the theatre precincts as it was raining profusely.It felt like destiny had cherry picked the worst time of my life to hurl water darts at me.At that moment I was seeing hideous metaphors in things around me, a statement fate was making to me with dramatic props. We were at the theatre's booking counter waiting for the rain to subside when I got started all over again. He was there patiently listening without an iota of indifference like for the first time as the prowess of the downpour was waning. From when on I feel-"A friend in need, is a friend indeed" for as much choice as you exercise in picking your company,the person that your friend turns out be in testing times is way beyond your whims.I was lucky to have him around.