I

Is this not the irony of the human mind?
When you possess something, you seem not to miss.
Yet, when you don’t have that very thing, you care a great deal.

A dot can easily become a star on a paper.
I wonder how I would impart its white colour;
Colour white per se does not exist,
Yet, many yearn to have white skin.

Why this repulsiveness towards our own skin?
After all acceptance has to come from oneself.
Even if the whole world accepts LGBT people,
Often the most difficult step is to accept oneself.

II

I am watched by the sun, the distant stars
Do they have memory often I wonder,
Does the most distant star in the entire galaxy ever feel lonely?
Is loneliness a concoction of our human mind.
Can the mind ever be lonely,
As the thought process never ceases.

III

Morality is invented by humans.
Reading the New Yorker article about Breivik
Makes me wonder.
Humans have always killed. The wars are the proof.
We have attributed a feeling that is
Passed on for generations.
That you must not kill others.
Yet, we metaphorically kill with our thoughts, our words,
Every day.
Aware I am that it is a delicate topic to tread on,
But why separate one incident when many shed their lives through violence.

IV

A tree is a family on its own.
It houses birds and insects,
And gives shadow too
Of course when there is sun or moon light.
The stillness of a huge tree
Makes my heart tranquil.

The worms, the insects,
The beetles and the wasps,
The hornet’s nests and the birds twig bed,
The variegated leaves and flowers,
The wind that jostles them,
The rain which finds its way through the minutest gap,
The hard bark housing a tender leaf,
A gigantic tree housing a big flower.
Where is this notion that a big man
Shall not wear not pink, else he is gay.
After all, until recently, being gay meant being happy.

The numbers, the words,
The drawings and the paintings,
The joy and sorrow,
Could they ever be real.
Are they ever absolute.
Do they ever talk with each other,
Often thinking I am,
They have beauty on their own.
My table number yesterday at Bagda cafe
Oh yes, there is a movie by the same name,
Was 13: it can be written as 2 squared + 3 squared.
Or 2 cubed + 5 or 2 to the power of four.
The various shapes of alphabets.
Be it Russian or Greek
Tamil or Sanskrit.
Chinese or Latin.
They have beauty.

Cold or hot,
Light or dark,
I only feel them through their opposites.
Is there ever such a thing as absolute?

William Wordsworth wrote about Daffodils,

I vacant or in my pensive mood,
They flash upon the inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.

V

Happiness, the world yearns for it.
It comes in several shades
For some like in this movie
Kakka muttai – crow’s eggs
Having a pizza meant the whole world for them.
A gadget. A toy, a boy friend or a girl friend,
Or no friend at all for some
Good sex for many,
And extreme sex for a few.
After all the fifty shades of grey,
And pornographic industry
Is a big market who exploit this human nature.

How In India an organisation which has given
For so many years
Gets trolled over some reports.
Yes Nestle or Pepsi.
Could we ever have a chat
Without too much emotion.
As they say like a gentleman.

VI

AIB made a video called load math yaar (don’t be stressed).
Hilarious it was.
They also made a video on Indian weddings,
And I could do nothing but laugh.
Marriage,
Bernard Shaw described it as licensed prostitution.

Many cultures,
have a contract for life and women are
most treated abominably.
Is it akin to slavery of the past ?
When we look at the human evolution,
Society and culture would not have
Evolved, had it not been for the bigger brain.
Thank you, big brain for working out,
Such a complicated web of life.

The unsung heroines, those unspoken women.

What atrocities are committed to them
FGM or many gym visits
Plastic surgery and sophisticated pills
Or a mid wife with a non sterile knife
Cuts decisively and earnestly
All in the name of tradition.

It happens to men too
It is called circumscission
I shall say no more
Else a radical extremist might target me
And eradicate from the face of this planet.

VII

Freedom, a privilege for many
And a curse for some.
Many will never taste it.
However, The limits of mind has
Infinite freedom. An area not tapped
By neuroscientists yet.

VIII

God and education is big business in many places.
You shall pay and reap the reward.
Give me money and I shall give you knowledge.
What is the necessity when the mind is corrupt,
With emotions and feelings,
With culture and tradition,
That sucks the marrow out of life.
Emptiness at last. Violence reigns.
The Arab spring or the London looting
Gun fights in favelas or
Gang fights over drugs and brothels.
Many will come in the near future
If the minds do not have a
Gentlemanly walk and talk.

IX

I hear dogs barking,
It is 3 am and the brightness of the stars
Masked by the human invention – electric lights.
Those stars shall never be visible to any.
They are indeed lonely.
‘Look up‘ some one made a video
As humans are more and more looking down.
Reminds me of the movie Wall-E
Where future humans,
All they do whole day
Is eat, watch TV from a comfy chair.
Around and around.
The mind becoming dull.

X

The mind is a powerful tool.
Ron Milo’s student in the course
CellbiologybyNumbers
Says that a viral particle has a
a capactity to store 1000x all the photos in Facebook !
Awe inspiring it is.
Could life be nothing but perpetuation of DNA.
Richard Dawkins and many have spoken about it.
Yet ’twas interesting to watch
‘what is life‘ from a physicist point of view.
From a talk in Karolinska.

XI

A single button has a power.
To turn on light, to start a fire
To cremate a body, to start a reactor.
Is there a switch for life itself.
Can I store life’s elixir
Or it is only possible in thoughts.
What happens to my thoughts after I die.
Know I that material things gets given away.
Memories remain for a few years in loved ones,
But ones hard drive of memory, does it spill over to others?

XII

Crippled. It is a bodily thing.
The biggest form is a
Crippled mind.
Gods and traditions elaborately cripple our mind.
Various texts wield,
Such immense power.

XIII

There is a clash among the old and the new.
The old want to keep their tradition.
The new is changing very fast.
Twitter, Facebook and what not
Can the old survive, holding on to their power?
Reading about Saudi Arabia where a 34 year old man
Is overseeing the military attack on Yemen.
Slightly younger than me, makes me wonder,
What a crippled state the mind has become indeed.

To sell weapons to one and to ask another to go
without nuclear.
Unclear it is.
Thou art very clever
The many super powers !

XIV

What is left then,
The imagination of a human mind.
It has seen no limits.
I can sit and see frames of
All the events in my life.
A fantastic movie with special effects
I can even have a Red carpet event
If I want too.
Like at Cannes or in Hollywood.
Such power the mind has, indeed!

XV

Not break the wall,
Said Akram Khan and Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev.
Does that mean we shall never
Be able to enquire ?
Beef eating or not wanting pork,
Halal or kosher,
Brahmin or Shudra,
Wearing a saree or not wearing a pair of jeans,
Sporting a red dot on the face or not sporting it.
Amusing it is,
To see various facial tattoos in the name of religion.

XVI

Mind, I shall always wonder about you.
Bewildered I am with your many attributes.
Can you ever be yourself without
Or you always something from the past
Like a virus needing a host,
Jiddu Krishnamurti says that one lives in the past or in the future
And seldom in the present.
Then Eckart Tole can gladly speak about
The Power of Now.

XVII

To what extent will you go to retain your hegemony,
Do you ever care that humans die,
In the name of your invented thoughts.
Do you feel remorse,
You have a gigantic belly,
And you keep asking for more;
When will you stop?
Is stop death?
Or is that life itself. The
Perpetuation of the thought process,
Through humans,
Is this realisation of any use,
to life ?

XVIII

I salute your resilience during times of adversity
I admire your philanthropy,
Yet, I fail to understand you
When you indulge in the name of life !