THAT PSYCHEDELIC AGE!

This poem is simply the most random poem I have ever written. During my Creative Writing lecture, the professor came up with this surprise Poetry Writing test and all I could come up was the poem that follows... The attempt could have been better and hence, somehow, I haven't felt the true sense of satisfaction with this work..!

Hope you guys enjoy reading this...!

THAT PSYCHEDELIC AGE!

The clashing reds and the shocking pinks,

The heap of filth that only stinks!

'MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR!' They went around chanting,

It was the reality, the social structure dismantling.

The 'SUMMER OF LOVE!' took the nation by surprise,

The psychedelic anarchy, on the mighty rise!

The weeds ended the lives in ashes,

the 'Purple Haze' was available in sachets.

'TURN ON, TUNE IN AND DROP OUT!, they all fell down,

They flower child mind the people calling him 'THE HAZARDOUS CLOWN'!

The whole of the Western world called them 'Creepies!'

While they proclaimed themselves as the carefree 'Hippies'!

Cheers! Leave Me Alone!

Was going through the Writer's Block phase and wanted to break it.

Tried my hand at versifying free verses but, alas! that's tough to do when writing serious poems after months.

Cheers! Leave Me Alone! 

Cheerful applause filling up the room,

Marching towards me...grand praises galore...

So, what does one carve out of these?

A Rosy life with place only for gayety, isn't it?

Further; racing up the stairs some moments from daybreak, daily...

My curious eardrums absorb the name from voices too many.

"Why me, once again?",the inner voice desires peace of mind,

'Peace of Mind'? Shocked; Tranquility, grew old, too many fortnights.

Popular! accepted with a hint of vanity...

Flashing the universal smile, reviving the sanity.

Scribbling nonsense syllables, engulfed in deep thoughts,

Thoughts; random and ceaseless, distracting; am lost!

"You did it!" laurel comes my way,

The bare void; I know, is still there to stay.

O Victory! do not teach me to celebrate,

Am aware of my ways; let us commemorate!

Another hour brings another cheer,

Another step towards success; am near.

Yet the shadow; Yes! the shadow,

Meets no light too bright; to kindly disappear.

Brilliance! I seek not thee,

It's the endeavour, I never wish for me.

Heard you knocking for sometime now,

Stay on! do not want my guest to be waiting for long!

Silence for an hour and queries are shot like bullets,

Why should I be audible, when I indulge with my heart in word plays?

Why O why, do you need to know every bit of it?

Have I lost the right to keep certain things forever sealed?

The hour of glory, grant me an immediate repose,

Call it a change, but, do not term me morose,

why do you keep digging into my yesterdays,

Yes! that was bliss, I know: but gone are the days.

So you wish to learn the reason for the Void?

Save it for a new day or simply ask Freud.

The man knows them all, the strange games my mind plays,

Spare me, till then, as for now, taciturnity hails!

One Night At An “Intellectual Centre!”

So, what comes to your mind when you hear ‘Prithvi Theatre’? 

A bunch of young struggling actors trying to get that one big break of their life? Or a crowded house full of intellectuals, striking up smart conversations? Or it brings to your mind nothing but the likes of Raj Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah and Boman Irani?

Prithvi Theatre is indeed much more than just that. I fell in love blindly and happily with the welcoming ambience on my very first evening at Prithvi. Staying in Mumbai for almost twenty years now had already acquainted me with the thespian finesse that the place has produced over the decades. To visit it was one of the myriad dreams that I nurtured for years. And it was the evening when my dream was about to come true, finally.

My first encounter with Prithvi was months back when I visited the theatre to watch the Peter Shaffer play, ‘Equus’ performed by a group of talented and creative enthusiasts. The excitement was inconceivable and I reached ‘THE PRITHVI THEATRE– The center of theatrical intelligentsia.’ I was welcomed by the classy lounge…Oh! I discovered later it was popularly called the Prithvi Café where often various book clubs have their private reading sessions and discussions. Moreover, you can simply grab a book or plug in the earphone, sit there and relax. I assure you from my personal experience...nobody will ever break your train of thoughts. So Prithvi gifts you the freedom of indulging in your thoughts for as long as you wish to.

Now, the time came to enter the theatre.

It’s not like one of those huge halls or auditoriums where there are enormous speakers installed at every nook and cranny and your ears are treated with the artificially processed voices of the artists. Here, it’s a cosy little auditorium where you have the liberty to sit wherever you wish to and you get to hear the unadulterated vocals creating magic for hours. The experience is like sitting next to the cream of theater under the same roof without discriminations. And, when the stage is set and the final whistle is blown, for the next couple of hours, the actors desire and indeed deserve your undivided attention. And, guess what? They do not ask for it, they simply command it with their splendiferous repertoires.

The performances are so memorable that even when the lights go off with the conclusion, you still wish for more. 


The Prithvi hangover tends to stay on longer than you expect it to stay. Eversince my first visit, I have made Prithvi my favorite escape and hang out. Everytime I feel low, I find myself browsing through the books at the small yet interesting Prithvi Book Shop…Everytime am truly happy, I wish to go to the prithvi lounge and sit there for hours… and as my culture studies professor puts it, there are indeed some of the cutest guys visiting the theater, so people, if plays and books do not interest you and you find no reason to visit the place, here’s the reason for you. Indeed, the Sulaimani chai over there is awesome and refreshing. Now, ‘Sulaimani Chai’ is a separate story altogether so I prefer saving it for another post, another day.

The simple understatement is that if you are a Mumbaikar or you are visiting Mumbai and wish to see one of the most prestigious possessions of Mumbai, do not ever miss THE PRITHVI THEATRE. Nowhere else will you find the perfect amalgamation of fun along with the overflowing talent which succeeds in casting a spell on you again and again.

An Emotional release or an Accumulation ?

“O hateful error, melancholy's child, 
    Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of men 
    The things that are not? O error, soon conceived, 
    Thou never comest unto a happy birth, 
    But kill'st the mother that engender'd thee!”

During my schooldays, I paraphrased these lines from ‘Julius Caesar’ over and over again but I recently felt connected to these lines over some of the recent dismaying turn of events. From the play’s point of view, these lines talk about how Cassius resigns to his fate, tries to fight on but ultimately surrenders and ends his life’s journey. But the movie, ‘The Lake House’ made me connect to these lines from a drastically different point of view.  

Ever noticed how we enjoy romantic comedy films on the absolutely carefree days and spend long hours watching back to back films from the drama genre specially the ones which have tragic endings. This particular behavior is not restricted to movies itself. Even our reading tastes consistently complement to our moods. Your days are sunny and you are reading Cecelia Ahern’s ‘The Gift’, Chetan Bhagat’s ‘Five Point Someone’, Sidney Sheldon’s ‘Tell Me Your Dreams’ and as soon as you are surrounded by gloomy blues, you start shifting your reading preferences towards classics like Jane Austen’s ‘Persuasion’, Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s ‘Love in the time of cholera’, Erich Segal’s ‘Love Story’, Danielle Steel’s ‘Heartbeat’ and so on and so forth. Now, the ones who stay away from books are no exceptions. Their musical tastes go hand in hand with their mood swings. From the songs of ‘Red Hot Chilli Peppers’, suddenly the playlist gets loaded with John Denver’s classic tracks.

Before I proceed with the post further, let me paraphrase these lines the way I connect to them. All our mistakes can be considered as the children of our sad thoughts. These very thoughts blind us completely and messes up with our reality in colossal ways. Ultimately, instead of relieving us from grief, it attracts more sadness and negativity into our lives.

Sounds confusing, isn’t it? Indeed it is!

Now, just think when we are feeling terribly low and depressed, why are we immediately inclined towards listening to sad songs or why do we like watching movies wherein the protagonists suffer at the end?

 This reminds me of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s famous quote,

 “Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thoughts”.

Very much true! These fictional characters and sad songs make us connect to them and we feel we are not alone living with pains. For some time, we consider them as some emotional healers and term them as the perfect escape. But, in reality, these movies and books paint our lives with deeper blues during the already blue phases and thus, instead of acting as an emotional release or an outlet, ends up accumulating more and more melancholy in our hearts. So, why do we still let our thoughts be the final decision makers? Let your spirit rise. The blues will indeed make you feel low, desolated and take you away from reality but, it is in your hands to make the final verdict. 

Don’t indulge in any of these forms of literature because literature is more powerful than you think it is. It can take you to cloud # 9 and in the next second instantly make you fall on ground from that height without any parachute and then, you know, where you land, right? The ultimate ‘Land of Despair’. Save yourself from the land of despair and keep yourself engaged with everything entertaining and no serious stuff and see your blues lighten and how magically your mood too brightens.

Cheers!

To Do Or Not To Do ?

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd.” 

Here are some of the best lines from the Bard of Avon’s nib, Hamlet’s soliloquy. In the above context, Prince Hamlet is extremely unsure of himself and often wavers between the two extremes – life’ and ‘death’

But, I am neither going to talk about Shakespeare’s greatness nor glorify Hamlet’s decision here. In fact, after reading these lines more than once, I realized there dwells a fundamental actuality which almost everybody experiences in their everyday lives. This is the most confusing sort of fear which can empower your thoughts for more than you can ever imagine. Even though our minds may not necessarily oscillate between the extremes of life and death, we often find ourselves in an unwanted state of fickleness which is usually capricious. Now, for the ones who have already started falsely convincing themselves that they never land up in such moments of obscure bemusement, here are some simple instances from our everyday happenings.

Don’t you ever decide to text anybody and go till the extent of even framing the entire message and just when you are about to add the recipient’s number, you hear a faint little voice within you asking you to stop; gradually the faint voice tends to yell at you and you immediately delete the whole text? In this case, it’s the simple fear of the reply or maybe the fear of no reply is something that impels you to question yourself – TO SEND OR NOT TO SEND?

Often we receive invitations for parties and we are all excited to attend the party and at the twelfth hour, it suddenly strikes that there is going to be that one person whose presence makes you feel uncomfortable and after a while, you not too gladly decide to miss the party. 

Here, TO GO OR NOT TO GO is the ultimate million dollar question.

The most common instance of vacillation is when we reluctantly eat up our words when they are at the tip of our tongues. The thought often pops up – TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY? We indeed face such moments every now and then, don’t we?

Now, the supreme question is 

“WHERE DOES THIS INDEFINABLE CONFUSION STEM FROM?” 

Is it our fear of confronting or our fear of losing an integral part of our existence? Ultimately, it is a vicious circle that has no definite end whatsoever. Especially, even after making the decision at the end of the conflicting thoughts, we still keep wondering as to why we made that very decision and why not otherwise. In all the above instances that I mentioned, our lack of decisiveness is very much visible.

In the case of sending the msg, we ultimately are afraid of the repercussion but we never realize that our not sending the msg might widen the gap which tends to becomes unbridgeable on the longer run. So, in the end, the loss is unavoidable so why fear at the first place?

Now, coming to the second example, we miss the party in order to avoid the uncomfortable feeling we would feel in that SINGLE person’s presence. But, we tend to forget that we miss all the other giggles and laughter in the bargain. Why entertain the not so important EGO and lose all the fun? Why give one SINGLE person so much of importance especially when they make you feel nothing but uncomfortable? But, again, we generally tend to avoid the rest of the group and focus only on that not at all important person.

Finally, coming to the last and the most common confusion – TO SAY OR NOT TO SAY? Don’t know about anybody else, but I personally experience this every single day on various occasions. If I do not agree with some statement, it is not always possible for me to say it out aloud though I may be dying to shoot my point of view. Why don’t I exercise my freedom of speech? Oh no! Do I even have it? But, this is again an inexplicable fear which creates a chaotic situation within my thoughts and at the end of the day; I decide to keep the words to myself. This may lead to unexpected consequences but saying them aloud too might not be very pleasant, will they?

This is not at all any ailment which can be cured with the help of medicines but it is indeed a never ending conflicting situation which we have to live with till the day we fall asleep forever. We cannot run away from these clashes; neither can we hide from them or escape them. All we can do is face them with a brave heart, make the decision that your heart prompts you to make and leave the rest on the SUPREME POWER that governs us all.

Peace!

20 years...summed up!

“LIVE EVERYDAY AS YOUR LAST BECAUSE ONE OF THESE DAYS, IT WILL BE!”

-          LIFE OR SOMETHING LIKE IT.

The movie “Life or Something Like It” truly didn’t have anything out of the box to offer but, it did succeed in attracting positive energy towards my otherwise negatively mundane and awkwardly silent evening. Nevertheless, the movie motivated me towards writing this post. This write up is absolutely a random one and I do not find anything negative about it because I do not find any reason in running away from something that is bound to happen.

‘Nobody is Immortal’ and death will find you some day for sure. You cannot escape death; neither can you hide from death, when it paves its majestic way into your life.

After living for almost a score of years, when I retrospect now, I see vivid moments of uncontrollable laughter – I must say those incessant giggles did earn me a commendable share of troubles too, but who cares?!? At the end, I was just consuming the best medicine, isn't it? I never forget… "LAUGHTER IS THE BEST MEDICINE”. Along with those heehaws, there are tears too, caused by immense grief, sadness and guilt. There are times when I have been unethical and there have been instances when I have diligently followed the rules, no matter what. There have been days brighter than sapphire and even too many hours darker than pitch black. I have often been regarded as the most cheerful person around; while on many occasions, I have pretended to be the strong person who I was not. So, there’s already a huge bag full of memorable experiences and there will be too many more I hope.

But, why am I writing this post?

Ah! After watching the movie when I came across this hilarious epitaph co-incidentally in some random Facebook album, I thought what if my last breath arrives sooner than I expect it to knock and that too without any prior notice? Obviously I will not be able to bury my head in the sand then but why not prepare an Epitaph beforehand only? Now, generally an epitaph is a simple quotation on any gravestone for the person’s soul residing inside the grave. But, I will never be able to sum up my life in just one statement; maybe others will be able to. So, my epitaph will be directly proportional to the amount I talk.

Hence, instead of just one line, here are a few lines that I would love to see on my Epitaph:

“You will be eternally remembered for your love that was limitless; smile that was constant; laughter that was contagious; talks that were endless; arguments that were baseless; acts that were hilariously careless; silence that was never heard; memory that was incredibly sharp; jokes that were terribly lame; hurts that were dejectedly irreversible; madness that was beyond comparison and nevertheless the shrill and distinct pitch which was never inaudible.”

Now, this I guess sums up my life perfectly as of now. Ten years ahead, there may be some additions or subtractions. Who knows? Because in any case, I cannot predict the future, can I?

P.S: The word ‘eternally’ is extremely essential for my epitaph. After all, I doubt there is anybody who wishes not to be ever remembered and I am not an exception.

The Voyage to ‘Beyond’ and back…

“Imagine there’s no country,

It isn’t hard to do.

Nothing to kill or die for,

And no religion too.”

                 -John Lennon.

These were mere four lines for everybody during one of the class twelve English lectures, excluding me. I came across these lines while reading the short story in our English textbook, “My Family and Globalisers”. The whole class moved on to the next lines while my mind stayed there and for the first time, I felt like listening to John Lennon. There was something extraordinarily intriguing in these lines which got me seriously hooked onto this song.  As soon as I returned home, I created a real mess as I frantically started searching all my CD collections to get hold of the Beatles discography. My cousin had long back gifted it to me but, I seriously never felt like listening to it. Alas! I deduced after going through the song list that it was a John Lennon single after there was a split in the Beatles. 

For the next few days, it was the sound of “IMAGINE!” that echoed throughout the day in my house and in my mind too. Songs written for a cause or with a story behind the lyrics always fascinates me and “Imagine” was not an exception. The image of Utopia which embodies the lines simply intensified my curiosity and google.com indeed comes handy at such times. The search results were countless but one thing was for sure…. Lennon and his ideals had made a permanent impression on my mind, or at least I thought so. The more I read about him, his songs, the causes he fought for, the demonstrations he conducted, which were nowhere even remotely close to violence made me admire him more. More than Lennon, I fell in love with the America of the 70s and truly wished that I would belong to that generation and join the mass protests that surrounded the Vietnam War. “Imagine !” was the key that opened the doors to the world that out and out enthralled me. I became more and more passionate with every passing day to know more about the political scenario then and the protests that took place. 

Going through the music videos of politically inclined songs like 'Imagine', 'Power to the People', 'Gimme Some Truth', 'Give Peace A Chance' on youtube, I noticed that it was the youth and the psychedelic strata of the counterculture, popularly known as the Hippies who played an active role in the protests. Somehow, I loved the way the Hippies didn’t care about a thing in the world and lived the way they liked. It’s often said that LOVE IS BLIND and it was proved right when I just couldn’t see anything negative about them and their lifestyle and was so very thrilled about their way of living that I even asked few of my friends whether they would love to live their life , the hippie way and join me in being a hippie..some years from now. My love for the America of the 70s redefined craziness as I decorated the walls of my room with hippie slogans like “Make love, not war”, “Free Love” and Lennon’s posters and his lyrics all over. I downloaded every possible documentary that talked about that era and I was more politically aware about America than I was about my own nation. Wearing clothes as colorful as possible, painting the nails with random colours and talking about the hippies and trying to make people aware about movements like flower power, Bagism, Woodstock movement, Summer of Love, Haight-Ashbury, Vietnam War, Nixon’s hatred towards Lennon. I noticed my liking in music too had undergone a drastic change. I started listening to psychedelic music and songs like Revolution, We didn’t start the fire, Come together etc. 

Gradually the interest drifted from the political fiascos to the Hippie lifestyle which was widely dominated by the usage of drugs like Marijuana, LSD – Lysergic Acid Diethylamide and other hallucinogens. My addiction to knowing more about them grew to such an extent that my Mom was convinced that one fine morning, I would simply pack my bags and leave home to become a hippie myself. I even found out the positive effects of LSD and started vouching for it by saying that LSD enhances creativity, helps in curing Migraine and even elevates you to a different spiritual level. I found myself aloof from my real being as I had created a psychedelic world of my own. Whether it was their colorful attires that appealed me or the causes that they fought for or their definition of individual freedom, I simply have no slightest idea about it. But, certainly the Hippies and Lennon’s music was influencing me more than I thought it would. 

But, one’s roots are always too firm to be uprooted. Similarly, the culture that has been imbibed in me from my very childhood is the one that you would often see in a typical Bengali family with parents who get worried over slightest issues, a mother who points out the flaws explicitly infront of the outsiders, a father who always overlooks the faults and there’s an immense interest towards intellectual movies, books and every other thing inculcated from the very childhood. 

With such an upbringing, when I started my first year in St.Andrews, I loved the newness of everything….from my crazy bunch of classmates to the highly insane presentations but, what came to me as a culture shock was the sight of few of my classmates smoking and even indulging in drinks during breaks. It was again shocking to see that their parties were mostly the night outs with pub as a compulsory part of the get-togethers. This was highly unacceptable to me and contradicted with my values. I would rather throw a huge bong lunch at my place for all my friends than spend time with them at a night club. I would rather visit Crosswords during the free lectures than drinking beer or smoking ‘ciggies’ as they call it. When I say all these, it’s certainly not about they are incorrect or I am correct. It’s just that several such incidents made me realize how different I am in my values that I couldn’t try join them for once and I was imagining of taking drugs like the hippies. This cultural shock suddenly made me realize that it was nothing but a temporary obsession that I had of turning into a hippie for that is just not the REAL ME. The real me is nowhere close to even enquire about drugs anywhere and to lead a bohemian lifestyle. Though, the causes and their protests are still something which I honestly support and my admiration for John Lennon and his ideals is again something unchangeable but, indeed I cannot identify myself with the Hippies for my upbringing is simply different in every sense to the hippie culture. The environment I have been brought up in, my peer group, my values do not in any way match to that of the counterculture. With a few more similar culture shocks, I simply countered the counterculture of the sixties from my system. 

But, the movies like “US vs JOHN LENNON”, “THE STRAWBERRY STATEMENT”, ”HARE RAMA HARE KRISHNA”, “IMAGINE” and the documentary “LSD – THE BEYOND WITHIN!” still stirs me up from within and I tend to dream about that colorful and psychedelic era and try to imagine what would have been…if I would be a part of those campaigns and then I say to myself…. 

“I WOULD BE A BIG LOSER AND A HOPELESS FAILURE AMONG THEM FOR I AM DIFFERENT.” 

Nevertheless, my ephemeral obsession with the peace movements of the 60s and the early 70s definitely brought diversity in my music liking and added Jim Morrison, Billy Joel, The BEATLES AND MOST IMPORTANTLY JOHN LENNON to my list of all time favorites. The cultural conflict I went through in some way or the other made me broadminded though I still cannot think of defining freedom in their way in my own life. The temporary madness even made me somewhat informative about the Vietnam War and the events that took place during that period. It even gave me an insight into the world of the Beatles, John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono; their peace movements like Bagism, Bed Peace, Hair Peace and too many more. And, if somebody asks me today “would you want a country run by hippies?” I would proudly say 

“I would love my country to be run by politicians who support the hippie causes and refrain themselves from discriminations, wars and violence of any form!”

To conclude with, all I can think is Lennon’s words which make complete sense even in today’s progressive world…..

 “IF SOMEONE THINKS THAT LOVE AND PEACE IS A CLICHÉ THAT MUST HAVE BEEN LEFT BEHIND IN THE SIXTIES, THAT’S HIS PROBLEM. LOVE AND PEACE ARE ETERNAL.”