Stuti Dhyani's Blog

I wish 

I could stand still in the moment

Hold my coffee and call it a day

De clutter, with eyes shut

Stand in the breeze, as-the dewed leaf sways

I wish

We hit pause and look back at the road travelled,

Smile a little that our life has been so full,

With moments so complete,

Made up of fuzzy memories and a million bickering…

I wish

Among the chatter of numerous thoughts leeching to the bones

There is one thought we snuggle upto,

Where you and I built our life together 

Despite disagreements, however herculean…

I wish

You can hear my unsung song

Which echoes on in the stark silence,

In every nook and cranny of the sometimes deserted room 

Once lit up by your Incandescence…

I wish,

We don’t keep wishing throughout

But find it in ourselves, the courage,

To take the action; to be true to us before being to others,

And for once and for all, end this sacrilege. 

    HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

There is a lamppost emanating a yellowish, pallid glow. A glow enough to illuminate the bench she is sitting on, amid the park she had often frequented. At a distance, light from another lamppost flickers. Occasionally, a breeze blows and ruffles the leaves on the trees and the pavement. Sometimes, the yellowed leaves fall off the trees, which line the pitch-dark night, onto the ground. The whole spectacle is punctuated by light from the lamppost in the backdrop.

She has been there for an hour or two, she cannot remember for how long. It isn't that cold, but she does feel chilly sometimes. Somehow, just sitting there makes her feel more comfortable and sung, shrouded in her thoughts and at more peace than going back to her home. Occasionally, some people walk past with their backpacks, rucksacks, or their bikes either alone or in groups of 3s and 4s some quiet and some giggling away in a language she doesn't quite fully understand. All she understands is that they are happy, at least at the moment. And that is something she should try out too. Maybe, this is something she must commit to her memory. And sometimes, she steals a glance at some solitary couple walking in the middle of the park holding hands and enjoying their walk. How fleeting all of this is, she thinks. But maybe fleeting isn't always bad as long as we realize that change is the only constant of life and nothing stays the same, at least not in the way we expect it to be. She realizes how cynical she has becomes - from an utter romanticist to this! Everything appears an unwarranted hyperbole of love and affection.

Her phone buzzes a couple of times interrupting her train of thought. She decides to turn her phone upside down. She isn't a fan of attending calls at times, but it is often herculean to make them understand. In the following second, she asks herself, does she understand what she wants? Thrown into this existential crisis, she looks far away and thinks of that solitary couple who had walked past some minutes ago.

Her head soon turns into a milieu of thoughts that she cannot process. Thoughts of everything she has seen and touched upon in this life, career, health, relationships, travels- taken and yet to be taken. Traveling young, extensively, has taught her that every few kilometers, people are different and that it is our differences that make us characteristically beautiful and poetic. Else we would all be prosaic, breathing in and out the air of redundancies. Differences should be celebrated instead of casting aspersions. Traveling young has made her challenge the stereotypes and break the norm of what has been and step out into what could be. But it comes at its cost. And you often have to weigh the odds. And then make a choice. You realize it is often not free will. More importantly, you realize that free will is nothing but a misnomer.

She looks down at her diary and wants to write but words, for the longest duration, have eluded her now. In a soulless pursuit, she takes out her hand to pen down her random, littered thoughts but her hands freeze, as the air around her turns crisper. She realizes it is time to leave. She has forever been on the run, never really reaching anywhere. She closes her eyes, smooths away a wisp of hair from her eyes, sits upright, and tries to relax as the lamppost flickers for a minute.

 

 तुम्हारे अजब मिज़ाज और कुछ हर्फ़ हमारे,

सिमटे हुए इस ज़िंदगी में यह दो पल हमारे

यह गीटीयाँ, यह सागर, यह रेत की बातें…
उनमे उलझते, सुलझते सिलसिले यूँ आते जाते…
अभी है कई रास्ते जिनसे हम गुज़रे नहीं,
अभी … ख़त्म नहीं हुई हमारी तुम्हारी मुलाक़ातें…

Living on a loaned time,

In a life, they say is mine…

Is a tale of two cities,

Cities, separated by seas and several heartbeats.

 

Cities, each, trying to chase a feeling

A feeling, constantly eluding…

Yet, spreading too thin,

And dwarfing everything …

 

Living on a loaned time for a long time,

Wondering when will their time begin?

And, will the two cities be one again?

Yes, A tale of two cities,

Cities, separated by different ambitions yet throbbing the same longing…

  Ever so gently, it falls

Amidst the humdrum and,

the struggles of the day’s long haul

 

And alights atop everything possible 

And just like that, without a whisper…

It turns the banal into beautiful!

 

And me, scattered with thoughts so random, 

These white flakes sit upon me such 

That all words of prose become a poem…

***

 

 The thoughts speak, 

Like the rustled sound of the autumn leaves...

Have come thus far; whither to now?

I think, sitting on the fence, alone somehow...

And a gale of crispness wafts through the air,

Rummaging the hair,

Silencing the thoughts,

As I lie sun-soaked on the blades of grass.

 

There’s a feeling that stretches to you from me,

That now fills up cracks and crevices in the memory,

Of the words not spoken and

the distances not travelled

 

A feeling that you’re well, wherever you are

And not in a way you show, but well to your bones

And that you haven’t lost that sheen in your eyes

That you’ve achieved what you’d set out for, a nd if not, it’s only made you a tad wise

 

That sometimes you sit under the red autumn tree

And  stare at your phone unblinkingly

And reminisce of times when it’d flash my name

And in that instant, with all your might, fight that urge to reach out to me.

 

That could we have taken that one way ticket

To a place where the world wasn’t a monochrome

To our Neverland, never to return …

To a place we could call home

 

There’s a feeling that stretches to you from me

In the crevices of memory that continue to live on

With a multitude of thoughts to battle …

So what if the words are not spoken and

the distances are not travelled?

***

 

Sitting languidly in your chair,

While everyone is caught in their own cacophony,

Do you steal some moments to think of me?
Do you still have those handwritten letters
And do you caress the contours of their folds wistfully?




Do you wipe the mist from the pane of the past,
Does that light up your face unwittingly?
And in a trance when you saunter in your garden
Do you forget that the coffee you are holding has been cold for awhile 
The kind that ,once upon a time, you’d shared with me?

If I douse the din of my thoughts,

In this deafening lashing of the waves,

Set everything free and see what remains,

Would your voice still resound in my head again?

 

In you I will find all my answers, I had thought

Yet here I am, trying to find my anchor...

Rudderless then, rudderless now...

Was the idea of you better than you, I wonder!

 

I watch the sun go down along the horizon,

While carrying an avalanche of emotions; Trying to tame…

And just like that one, big wave breaks into many small waves,

Would my ego surrender too, and finally make a bargain?

 

 ग़र सबके बाद यह मंज़र मिले

तो ऐ ज़िंदगी, तेरे सारे सितम मंज़ूर हैं
जानती तो नहीं कि कहा रहता है खुदा
पर यक़ीनन ,इस धरती पे यह जन्नत ज़रूर है।