Thoughts on a still night

The dried flowers smell of a glory past..
the warmth of my sheets cant kill the cold..
the cold inside .. of a dead hope..
of a hope so withered .. so gone.. so old..

The song begs for memories to rise..
to sway in rhythm with the quiet
the violin stirs a vague recall ...
of a sonnet i am too scared to recite..

Obscure lights keep the night from dark..
Silence cradles.. the mist in the air...
Everything is still...tense for the climax..
I am awake . but, i cant move .. its not fair..

Oh, the stranger i met on my way,
we walk along but yet alone..
Oh the person sleeping by my side..
i wont breathe, dare i miss a stir or a moan..

My paintings

These are my new paintings..


The Al- Azhar Mosque is in Egypt.. I only saw it from outside..but it is a beautiful piece of architecture.. intricate.. delicate.. strong... and seems like it has come out of prayers .. of all the people who go there..

The other one is a recreation of a picture I downloaded from http://www.dpreview.com. The picture was a sample shot for one of the cameras.. That is the website to refer.. if you are looking for cameras..and dont know what to buy..

Mosque is water color.. i dont like it so much .. coz i really did not use the brush at all.. the brush was more like a pencil.. however, i loved oil.. it is amazing how the colors move under your fingers.. the feel is great..
I respect water color more.. it is hard... coz it needs a lot more control.. there are no do-overs. And.. Oil colors are more vibrant.. and it is beautiful.. i want to try more of this..As you can see it is still incomplete.. When I went to Houston, spent a couple of hundred dollars on supplies. Cant wait to do more.. but have been so busy !

It will have to wait.

Ab Ke Hum Bichde-- Ahmed Faraz

I am listening to ab ke hum bichde sung by Mehdi Hassan..In the live performance, he says " this raaga is made with a komal daivat in bhopaali .. isee daivat mein saare bichardne ka dukh saamne aajaata hai"...

The ghazal mourns for a past that is gone.. of a past that wrenches the poets heart..It picks on the deepest wound.... until it becomes raw... slowly .. a bright red spot of blood appears..and widens...... and then flows down with your most merciless tears, of regret. of a madness that once filled every thing in and around you.. .an aching known only to who have loved ...truly with their mind... with their heart... their existance.... and then lost it..

Ahmed Faraaz, the poet.. he knows how to pluck the right strings to trigger a silent sigh.. that grows in to a thunderstorm of pent up sorrow..

Now that we are apart... perhaps we will meet in our dreams ...some time....
like finding a dried flower in an old book....

Search for the pearls of trust in broken hearts..Perhaps you will find the treasure in those ruins... The more devastated I feel about my loss, closer i am to how i felt when i was in true love...Perhaps I can find the treasures of my lost faith in love in the ruins of my broken heart...

Now that you are gone.... when i feel low...devastated with even mundane disappointments ... the most i miss is how i felt in the times bygone.. I drown to new bottoms... and a piercing ache.. a dismay that has no remeday at all..... settles on my mood.. there is a strange kind of satisfied feeling in drowing in the sorrow.... of you... of me... put together with everything that could have gone well....Perhaps you should mix the pain of the world with the pain of love... After all, when one wine mixes with another, you can atleast lose yourself in the heights of intoxication..

You are not God.. neither was my love divine.. when we are both human... why did we meet each other so many pretences... "donon insaan hai tou kyon itney hijaabon mein miley?"..... i cant find any way of restating what the poet is saying here.. He knows exactly what I would feel like.. I feel that poets like Faraz are the best friends to share your sorrows with.. they take your most tearing pain .. and turn it in to something so beautiful....

I loved the idea of loving you.... you loved for what you thought I was... I hid my self behind so many masks... Neither of us could confront the truth of what we were... why did it have to be like that? when we are only human.. why do we chase the image of divine love.. never seeing one another for what we are..

Now, I am no longer what i was before... you are not what you were .... the times we had together ..are gone ...long ago..it all seems so surreal.... nothing seems real.. not you .. not me.. not our union.....the we way we met in life .. seems like
a union of two shadows in the mirage of wishes....

I am unable to get out of that mirage.. I am lost in the ruins of my lost love...All that is left ... tears... and a lingering wish of seeing you... in my dreams.... in future .. some time.. some day.... some place....... I hope.... to find that dried flower in my book...