Of Smoke and Lovers

The crimson red lights on the ceiling.

Projected from the little blood colored bulbs. 

Scattered around the empty glasses.

And you two …

Parachuting down to Earth from heaven. 

Panting. Lost in reminiscence of love making.

Lying still. Naked.

Just like two corpses together. 

But Smiling in harmony!

You see her face, 

Through the thickness of the smoke turned red. 

Her eyelids are shut. 

And so remain both of you. Shut. 

Inside those four walls.

Fearing to go out, face the world outside. 

But still she seems happy now! 

Is her life too much easy,

Lying naked in her lover's arms? 

And you appear to be happy too!

Oh! what is it that you are high on? 

Is it her charms or the smoke in the room? 

Lost and Found in The Himalayas: A Travelogue

It comes back to me now the feeling of the chilled up wind blowing, kissing my face, letting me lose my own self, making me realize that they are coming from far North. That far North where the Himalayas stand still. That far North where lies no fake faces, no masking up but real smiles. That far North where pure and naked human emotions surface up.

Half a thousand miles away from the very mainstream of humdrum of city life, lies a village in the most fortunate lap of Parvati Valley. A village named Tosh in Himachal Pradesh is where we started our main journey into the woods. 

The Valley of Tosh Village

This serene village offers some real peace of mind with its calm air and the local people untouched by the world outside, still rejoicing their age old customs and traditions. From Tosh, one can trek to Khirganga which lies at an elevation of 3000 m. Tosh offers some majestic views of snow covered peaks, a couple of which I am sharing here. 

The Mighty Mountains facing the village

Watching the far North

Around 4 km east from Tosh, lies a sister village to it. The Mysterious Kutla is an another village where the mountains roars in their own silence. While trekking uphill from Tosh to Kutla, you will witness some extensively beautiful scenery, vegetation, streams and falls. In the month of March this year, we got lucky that it was still snowing in this alienated village and the snow flakes bestowed upon us as we entered and spent a snowy afternoon in a secluded hamlet. 

The Mysterious Kutla

The evening we trekked down from Kutla to our hotel in Tosh, the same evening we further descended into the Parvati Valley and reached Kasol and in the after hours from sundown we trekked uphill to Chalal, yet another village lying on the right to river Parvati (Kasol being on the left). It rained down heavily all this while adding to our patiences and experience.  The next morning when we woke up in Chalal, however, we got the prize for all the hardships. This charismatic village was offering us all some cracking sunshine, the fresh morning breeze right after the cold experience of Kutla the previous evening.

The colourful Chalal

We stayed in Chalal for two nights and explored the nearby brooks, hills, local people and their culture, shepherds, and small scale cafes and restaurants boasting of their local cuisine and fine quality of Hashish on an obvious note.

The Playful Clouds as observed from Chalal Village

It is from this village, that the trek to Rasol starts. Rasol (3048 m) lies hidden amidst the mountains and is by far the least explored village I have seen in the Parvati Valley. It is a two to three hours trek form Chalal, almost 70% of which is steep but do able nevertheless. From up above the village one gets a mesmerizing view of  the mountains arranging themselves in a zig-zag pattern. 

The View from Rasol Village

 Rasol can be covered in a single day trek. Not many people are aware of the fact that from this village there is an another three to four hours trek that leads to Malana Village, which needs no introduction. Rasol offers a travel into the past, where people are still living proudly with their culture, their own deity, their unawareness about the world outside. It all just thrills your soul.

After this trip into the simple and soothing lifestyle of Rasol, we trekked our way down to Kasol via Chalal.  Kasol being the hub of marketplace and the most happening place to be among all nearby attractions. It is from Kasol that we bid our Goodbye to the Himalyas and came back only with heartfelt promises to visit back soon. 

I dare to put forward an opinion that man may wander in the cities, man may travel in the air, man might reach up to the stars, but the peace of mind and the feeling of stillness that the mountains offer are just right for the human conscious mind. That's what make travel into Himalayas a moment of epiphany and mysterious revelations.

So plan up, backpack, and get ready to be lost and found in the Himalayas.

From the Streets of Kasol

Colours of The Night

In the night,
The near and the far will merge into darkness.
Your reveries will be transcendental.
Heavy eyelids will want to go off duty.

In the night
The moon will complain of its other half.
The dancing clouds will surround it.
Like stretching forth the soul from it.

In the night,
You will invite your muse to keep you awake.
You will talk of things unheard, untouched.
You will align reality with escapism.

In the night,
The mask of happiness will not be there.
Innocent faces will cry out their plight.
You will notice it in its most nakedness.

In the night,
You will be harboured in your haven.
Shrouded up with lightness of impunity.
Ridden from heavy colors of daylight.

In the night,
The fear of dark and void will surround you.
But you will observe million illuminations in it.
And those lights will guide you home.

the ELIXIR

Like the wind blows,
And set the static leaves in a motion so harmonic.

Purple evening rays,

reflected by stirring leaves in a display so scintillating.

Like the rain drops,

Meet the ocean, shedding their own existence.

Likewise the love goes,

And set the million emotions on animation. 

And those beings wandering in love, 

let that charm displace egotism out of'em.

Like a panacea, 

Like an elixir,

Love brings souls on the surface. 

What follows is

An accord of those sanctified souls,

Dancing in a realm so unknown to us.

Photo Location: Dharamshala, H.P.

kiki emoticon

Where do I look For Myself? 

Artwork by: Hossein Irandoust

Triumphantly as he emerged,
Brooding over the path covered.
Ecstasy veiled up the mirror.
The latter said,
Do not look for your depths in me,
You have shed your being.
Find yourself: Behold her. 

Make her chatoyant eyes
your cynosure.
And conflate the world,
those two pairs adore.
  
In between your enchantings,
Pastiche comes to home. 
In the eternal valley of silence, 
You two often take up voyage. 

The gleaming love in your eyes,
Lilts & ends in her wet shoulders. 
The mirror drew every parellel.
Behold yourself. You are all her. 

-Lalit.

THE AMALGAMATION

 In this Robe that my body adorns,

What lingers is your amusing attire.

To let it sublime, I wash it for once

And again; I let my Robe crackle,

Iron down your crumbling presence.

But that do not erase those creases.

And Blemishes of grudge and grievances,

Do not fade away by mere washing of it.

#Translated 

Corner Stones in God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

"Only that once again they broke the love laws. That lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much." 
- God Of Small Things







                  

The Booker Prize(1997) winning, debut novel by Arundhati Roy is constituted with gloomy, rebellious, haunting and heart touching strains, written in her eerie and indiffrently significant humorous style. With the recurring flashes of Semi-Autobiographical notions, the novel picks up Communism, Caste System, Male dominance, and The keralite Syrian Christian culture as its edges.
Having the major plot set in the Ayemenam district of Kerala, weather reports of which are so beautifully descripted that it would put any Romantic's Poet to shame. Beneath the ever drizzling clouds of Ayemenam, Roy touches the forbidden themes of relations between classes, tensions in cultural diffrences, social discrimination, supressed love and to an affective extent, patriarchy. Also a inter-caste sexual expression, an incestual love making, and bodily apetite for physical relations culminates in the intricate web of recurring scenes through the character of Ammu-Velutha (a paravan) , Rahel-Estha and Chacko and her female employees respectively.
Accounting for the evidences of social discrimination; relative inferiority complex between touchables and untouchables, Christians and Hindus, whites and blacks( as in the case of Chacko and his wife, Margareta) also find their instances in the novel. Sophie Mol tells the twins that they all are "wog", while she is a "half wog". 

The book contains the story of two "fraternal" and "dizygotic twins", Rahel and Esthappen and of their rebellious mother, Ammu, who ends up to her fate in a "viable, die-able age".  Little Estha with his "beige and pointy shoes", "elvis puff", his theories of "Anything can happen to anyone" and 'does happiness counts in a dream' echo through the course of the book. His 18 minutes younger twin sister, Rahel with "her hair sitting on her head like a fountain" in her "love in Tokyo" band, is an intelligent child, through whose eyes, major part of indirect narration takes place. The narrative style revolving around the life course of twins, unfolds itself in a non linear and a non chronological manner. The third person narration is often accompanied by flashbacks and lengthy side tracks. 

Sophie Mol's (daughter of Chacko) dies and unexpected sequential death, which also happens to be the central and most crucial incident of the novel. Following which, the lives of everyone related changes drastically. The book is violent in tearing you down with grief. It is reality in its most naked form. Roy spreads out human emotion on the floor for your scrutiny. She dissects human emotions for the readers and let them conclude from whichever part they lay their eyes upon the unexpected.

"It is an inextricable mix of experience and imagination." Roy concludes about her novel.