Hiya folks, somehow not able to turn out poems however I try. Many of em in various degrees of incompletion are resting in my computer and on untidy sheets of paper. Following the wisdom that it is of no use yanking a dry udder I thought, let me treat you to some prose.

I wanted to write something on the various shades of joys and sorrows I have had the good luck to pass through. So starting with...


Pink, the Color of Joy, Seeped into my Fingernails

If I had to give joy, mirth, and fun gay abandon a color it would be pink.

I had a friend who used to question what reason what sanction one needed to celebrate life. He was an apologist for birthdays, New Year celebrations, Diwali, Krishna Jayanti, Independence Day, Republic Day, Valentine's Day...I strongly suspect he had gone around wishing 'Happy Good Friday' to all his Christian friends in his younger days until someone not quite politely stopped him on his ebullient tracks. He used to say, 'All festivals are great excuses to rejoice because to do so all alone and without a reason shall look a wee bit crazy. Imagine how would it be to burst crackers on some odd tuesday, to throw colors on each other on a nondescript saturday, or to ask your Dad for new jeans on some godforsaken day that is not your birthday!'. 'I can't feel happy just because you are supposed to be celebrating a certain date. It seems to me as fakery, plain and simple.' He would theatrically retort, 'Though it is sad that celebrations too have to be institutionalised it makes me shed tears of blood to see you question their logic instead of grabbing the opportunity to be gay abandon'. So, when he pranced on Diwali morning guiding kids quarter his age in exploding 'atom bombs' and 'hydrogen bombs' of Bijili and Sparrow brands I would spend my time on my balcony breathing the smokey sulphur fumes that rose from the streets.

I had my own reasons ofcourse. My personality came dressed up as reasons-a sobriety supported by a overdeveloped sense of skepticism when it came to human nature. I couldn't digest the fact that wishes kept pouring to no end from people who on other days would only extend a cursory nod or at best a smile. Bear-hugs, salutations, endless greetings that people could say in an unthinking 'Hey...Happy Diwali, Hey...Happy Christmas, Hey..Many Many Happy Returns of the Day' tone like a turbaned door-keeper employed to bend low in grace for every customer. I thought people smiled incessantly without investing it with any amount of responsibility. I compared it to what alcohol could effect in people. On a high, people become super-friendly, forget their petty troubles, jealousies and self-centredness, and apparently become so gregarious. Festivals seemed to have the same numbed pleasantess about them. A transitory intimacy. Automaton joy on an appointed date; friendliness for no rhyme or reason. Only to vanish the next day like crowds after a cricket match leaving the stadium littered with a loneliness (known only to the ragpickers). Is that why I have always felt the day after Diwali to be the most desultory?

I held that tokens of love held true meaning only among one's beloved ones and closest friends. They mean it. They shall bear the cross love may entail-if it comes to that. Others-acquaintances, fellow workers, batchmates, society-can't but remain shallow. But where I smelt insincerety or at best the unthinking habit of ritual, my friend held that the fact they atleast smiled, hugged, and opened up on these days was a real gain. He had then pleaded, 'Is it so difficult to be affectionate to a fellow human being, acquainted not even a total stranger, without tying him into deals of love and responsibility...No doubt these festivities are oases in a desert. But would you refuse them because they are a passing phenomenon? The stretching deserts are reasons enough to have our fill of the oasis whenever we stumble by them. Don't you think so?'. I wryly replied, 'I think they are mirages'.