UNTO TO YOU MY EVERYTHING

The heart is closer to God than the mind. Hence surrender comes from the heart easily. Resistance comes from the mind. The mind is outward looking. The heart is inward looking. Which is why when you settle in the heart, you feel whole, complete. And when you settle in the mind, you wander as far as the space allows. Surrender is always considered counter productive, against the will of man, a sign of weakness.

But to surrender to the will of God is what takes more courage and strength than to stand up and fight the mind of man.

When I speak of surrender, I am speaking from my heart. I am residing in the spot from where the sights and sounds arise. In that space there is nothing but love to know, experience and give. That love isnt an emotion. It is existence itself to me.

It is this kind of an all pervading love that I want to live in - owning everything, and being owned by everything. A non-exclusive, unmanifested part of everything.

Happy Janmashtami to all!

Zindagi Jab Bhi (Umraojaan)

Falling in love is nothing if not mystical.

I mean, isn’t it one way of experiencing the highest state of consciousness with our heart, mind and body? The most precious emotion that goes beyond the realm of reason? I have yet to meet someone who hasn’t felt the flutter of love ever in their life. It’s inconceivable to me that people can walk this earth without drenching in the rain at least once.

Why did God put a heart in us? To beat in tandem with another heart. Pumping blood is just an add-on function.

What alters love from a feeling to a palpable reality is the expression of it. What’s love if we don’t profess it? What’s the use of harbouring intense feelings of ardour if it is not articulated? Enter poetry to fulfill this purpose, and in the specific context of this Khayaal series, think ghazals.

When the ripples of emotion that sweep over two people in love are converted to impassioned poetry, love assumes a sublime aspect that transcends the ordinary. It stops being a mere attraction between two mortal bodies and becomes a hymn to which the spirit capitulates unconditionally.

A ghazal taps into the faint, impalpable dimensions of romantic love and intoxicates us with its quintessence. A secret tryst between two lovers can be converted to a glorious portrait of love and longing when accompanied by a ghazal on the screen. It would make even the most unromantic heart long for a tender touch and a stolen glance.

ज़िन्दगी जब भी तेरी बज़्म में लाती है हमें ये ज़मीं चाँद से बेहतर नज़र आती है हमें

(Whenever life brings me to this grand congregation of your presence, I find the earth more beautiful than even the moon.)

Note how the male lover is telling his beloved that he didn’t come to her by his own volition. ‘Life brings me to you. It leads me to your dreamy company’ as if it is in their destiny to be there together. As if the Universe had it all planned for them. What a tender pointer to the power of serendipity in those lines!

ज़िन्दगी जब भी तेरी बज़्म में लाती है हमें..

Between earth and the moon, the latter has always stolen the limelight in poetry and literature. Drab earth. Desirable moon. The moon is traditionally described as the epitome of all beauty, all right, but in the company of the beloved, it is the earth that wins the contest in the lover's eyes.

ये ज़मीं चाँद से बेहतर नज़र आती है हमें

The earth is embellished by the presence of the beloved. What significance does the celestial body have in such circumstances, after all?

And now consider how the poet has delineated the beguiling impact of the beloved’s presence on the man’s heart when he writes,

सुर्ख फूलों से महक उठती हैं दिल की राहें दिन ढले यूँ तेरी आवाज़ बुलाती है हमें

I need to allow myself the luxury of some deep contemplation to annotate these exceedingly beautiful lines replete with imagery.

We must keep the beloved’s presence constant in our mind as we listen to this ghazal and follow its lyrics.

(The pathways of my heart are redolent with the fragrance of red blooms (roses, perhaps). It is through these fragrant lanes laid out by my impassioned heart that I walk to reach you whenever your sweet voice beckons me at sundown.)

I am so tempted to call sundown as nighttime.

Nighttime somehow adds to the intimacy and frenzy of their clandestine meeting. And also because there is a mention of the night in the lines that follow -

याद तेरी कभी दस्तक, कभी सरगोशी से रात के पिछले पहर रोज़ जगाती है हमें

(Your memories knock on my heart, sometimes with urgency and at other times as a whisper, breaking my sleep, night after night in its latter half.)

The pangs of separation and thoughts about our love become potent in the night, don’t they? Sometimes they come rapidly, shaking us out of our sleep, rattling our consciousness, and sometimes, the thoughts merely whisper in our ears. Either way, the night is spent in the fluid realm of the beloved’s memories. Longing gets magnified in those hours even as sleep eludes.

But then, it’s not just the tender thoughts of the beloved that robs the sleep of the lover. It is also this creepy, niggling worry –

हर मुलाक़ात का अंजाम जुदाई क्यूँ है अब तो हर वक़्त यही बात सताती है हमें

(Why? Why should the eventuality of every meeting be separation? Why should every union culminate in parting ways? I am deeply tormented by this constant thought now.)

There is the unconstrained joy of anticipation in life, of meeting, of uniting, of giving yourself to the other completely. But with the joy also comes the sneaky fear of losing it all in another instant. What a paradox it is that the moment of communion that gives us a high is also the moment that devastates us with the prospect of parting with time! How sinister it is that our delights and desires are sabotaged by our fears!

I need to take a few seconds now to absorb the poignancy of this couplet. The desperation I feel in my bones as the bitter truth sinks in is reaching my eyes and threatening to spill over.

It is a rhetorical question, one that has no definite answer. And the absence of an answer frustrates the lover who is uttering it to his beloved just as it frustrates the listener. The vicarious pain and fear of loss gets overwhelming here.

Yet, the lover reiterates, just as we all may -

it is in these moments when life leads me to you through the scented pathways of my lovelorn heart that I exist. It is in your bewitching presence that I find fulfillment.

ज़िन्दगी जब भी तेरी बज़्म में लाती है हमें

ये ज़मीं चाँद से बेहतर नज़र आती है हमें

How simple yet so mesmerizing, this ode to the beloved!

Now, listen in with the lyrics in mind.

Film - Umraojaan (1981)

Lyricist - Shahryar

LOVE DOTS

My 10 O' Clock flowers have been out of sorts, of late. They have been dormant for several weeks now. It is if they have suffered a deep cut in their soul and the wound has stopped them from blooming and bursting into a song like they used to before they wound themselves up into this listless state.

It’s not in the character of the 10 O' Clock to be so reticent; it is born to spread mirth and speak with the elements even when there is no rain; even when there is no puddle collecting around its feet from the gardener’s indulgent sprayer. Their continued torpor makes me worry. I wonder if they are sinking into some inexplicable sadness, like humans these days are, everywhere.

At this point, I want to give my 10 O' clocks a name for easy reference. Not the biological Portulaca. But something closer to the heart. Love Dots, perhaps?

Love is the word that first comes to my mind when I think of them dotting the pots over which their green shoots hang with gay abandon. But now a days they don’t materialize to charm and serenade me. They don’t sing ballads of love to me anymore. The Love Dots in my balcony have withdrawn to some anonymous corner of the desert.

Do deserts have corners, by the way? I do not know. But if there were, that’s probably were depressed souls of this part of the world would retreat. In the poles, it might be deep under the ice sheets. In every age and place, sombre, aching hearts need a place to hide. A place to bury their yesterday’s tales; a casket to hold their tomorrow’s fears and a chalice to hold their today’s tears. My Love Dots must have found a cover between the sandy layers of the ochre expanse.

I want to hold its hand and have a talk, soul to soul. Perhaps then, it may tell its poignant tale. It might reveal its secret sorrows that turned it into a mass of bare overgrowth.

The Love Dots have a flaw. They are by nature bright and beautiful, and a definite delight to the human eye. Now, how is that a flaw, a disadvantage? A happy-looking thing like that is not expected to tell sad stories from its life, and it cannot cry openly. Did my Love Dots too hold their angst inside for too long, and when they began to suffocate, finding no means to channelize, escape to the corners of the desert to wet the dunes with their tears?

I want to spend time with what remains of my Love Dots’ life in the pots outside. Perhaps, during our discourse we will realize that what’s going on inside me is what is going on inside it too. I may then be able to see that we have similar stories. Black and brown stories that we embellish with our colours for the world to see as flowers and poetry.

I will then tell my barren Love Dots, holding it so close to me that it will mistake my heartbeats for its own, and whisper, ‘You are not alone. The whole world is in disquiet. There is melancholy in every falling leaf. There is fear in every blade of grass. But there is sunshine too falling through the dense woods. The darkness that you harbour in your heart will flee one day and there will be Light.

I know it for certain, because this conviction is what has kept me alive. It isn’t a fallacy; it is an insight that dripped into me over countless nights. Without it, I too would have fled to the obscurest end of the earth or to the bottomless sea when terror welled up in my eyes and clouded the vistas outside. When waves of an unknown numbness began to take the shape of life. When little spider ran amok in the head building cobwebs. When I lost myself more often than I discovered in this long winding maze.

I still go astray every now and then and mill around aimlessly. There are days when I stare into the vast sea from my window and see only a blanket of grey, meaningless expanse. And like you, I imagine myself becoming a bloomless mop bereft of all joys, and then suddenly, as if ordained by a celestial power, I see a meteor shower in my soul. I see a million reasons to bloom and smile. The fears and the pains abate for a while. I am inspired to flail my hands and fly. In those moments I see Light.

My Love Dots,

I am waiting for you to troop back into my balcony. Your absence makes my life weirdly incomplete. Return from wherever you have gone to heal your wounds. There is nothing for you to love or anyone to love you in the wilderness. It is here that your life’s purpose lies. It’s here that the Light shines. It is here that Love thrives. Let’s bask in it together. And when at times, there is an eclipse and a shadow falls upon us, we will light a candle, for our sake and for the rest wallowing in the darkness here.