RAINY – DAY BLUES

Pitter patter, sound of laughter,
The earth soaks, in cold water.
Brings to life a hidden frame,
A fond word spoken or a hooting train.

Plummeting down, a falling song,
While helpless trees, swing along.
Walk the road or ride your dreams,
By murky pools or lucid streams.

Oh! Hear the merciful angel sing,
To greet the return of the King.
Back to sate, the ocean and land,
A parched throat or an empty hand.

And as the sun sets beyond the hill,
Is heaven lost or is it raining still?
Pitter patter, sound of laughter,
The earth soaks in cold water.

MEMORIES and MIRAGES

Myriad memories, Mirages of the past,
Here to haunt and here to flaunt.
Once, a cherished instant,
Now, a treasured moment

Fleeting glimpses and panoramic heights,
A few yards more, and a whole new sight.
Eternity seems just a step away,
As the miles disappear in a dizzy sway.

Hope to find what the road ahead hath,
But never to forget the trodden path,
For, if ever there was a place,
Where the sparkling shone,
It is but the road,
That takes me home, Sweet Home.

COUNTER – STRUCK!

Peace prevailed. I used to get my daily share of food and fresh water. Life was more than smooth, what with the daily afternoon naps and interminable hours of doing nothing. An occasional break from sleep was sought whenever the need to do something more constructive/destructive arose. But fate it seems had scripted a life, far more terrible and several folds quicker, for me. Without warning, one beautiful lazy day, like the flooding of an absolutely dry river, cometh the affliction, COUNTER STRIKE, its name.

Cries of “Fire in the Hole”, through the crackle of static, and the incessant staccato of machine guns, amidst the ineffectual calls for help from fellow teammates, barged into my brain… and life. Hours of doing nothing, effectively transfigured into hours of doing something very much equivalent to nothing. Food, academics, music, sleep and bandwidth were sacrificed for a graphic 20 minutes of a vividly embellished, graphical world. The simple joys of life were thrown aside and replaced by a materialistic, yet immaterial feeling of accomplishment, which in coarse language can be aptly termed, “Cheap Thrill”. Quite unbelievably, the simple virtual ness of a highly complex bundle of code, could keep me away from everything and anything for hours together. I was both disgusted and fascinated at the same time. A recently upgraded computer, a final year engineering student, the ability to fight guilt valiantly and a bunch of like-minded friends, made the perfect recipe to cook a worthless broth that smelt strongly of wasted time and procrastination. Eventually, realization dawned, and by the time I had recovered, first internals had passed by, many of my answer scripts promising to be not much longer than the sheets carrying the godforsaken questions.

A Sniper lurks round the corner, as a fearless warrior stands against the fire.
Walking the path of redemption… yours humbly,
The Counter Struck.

PERPETUAL DARKNESS

Darkness deceives, Darkness defines,
For, it is amidst darkness, that the essence of light survives.
So strive on, to capture the eluding horizon,
And welcome the defeats,
As you shall the victories,
With arms wide open……

MALAISE

“Malaise”: a word that truly lives up to its meaning. Words like these make the language a tad more beautiful and make it a lot more easier to relate, to the several complicated states of mind one can find himself/herself (just in case I were to be branded a Male Chauvinist Pig) in. It’s a state of temporal decrepitude of the mind, which is characterized by a lethargic relation between the lightning fast neurotic messages and the rebellious motor system. Every now and then I become an unwilling guest to this despicable stupor. The reasons, several in number, are not subject to exploration in this piece of writing (As a VTU student, I guess Out OF Syllabus, would be more like it). As I struggle to urge every muscle in the body to bridge the gap between the message and the service, I find myself invariably moving towards the Idiot Box of the new Era, the Personal Computer.

Like a well rehearsed snippet from a Shakespearean play, my fingers string together a set of actions on the mouse and the keyboard, that miraculously lead me to one of the more frequently visited folders in my computer. My eyes do a surprisingly quick scan of the LCD screen before coming to rest upon the fairly successful cure to this ailment of the mind, affiliated to the body. A double click and the treatment begins.

The ensemble of signals that course through my auditory passages, triggers off chemical reactions in my nervous system that faithfully relays the message “Comfortably Numb” to my unwitting brain, just as Roger Waters begins to mouth out the words, “Hello, Is There anybody in THERE?”, belonging to one of the most psychedelic compositions of music ever. A sense of detachment dominates as the song moves smoothly from the first stanza to the chorus. Every time I try to make sense out of it, I end up being more confused than ever. The sound of an overdriven guitar pierces the air in between the hypnotizing verses, as Gilmour paints a contradictory picture of an isolated, serene shore with restless, troubled waves receding into the horizon, with effortless ease and thorough expertise. A feeling of equilibrium eases into the mind, towards the final stages of the song. A segment marked by a high-pitched, flanging solo, leads to an overwhelming overture, before the song fades into the steady tick of a seconds needle.

The feeling of malaise melts, the hand matches the mind. Serviced and cured, the patient walks out to face the world again…….