THE WHITE LILY AND THE SACRED SONG

 The phrase is "don’t  forget"... don’t  forget even when you want to have bonding the most, never forget that the  line should never be crossed, even when you are tempted to do so, for a white lily is better than chain or bracelet or a knuckle that you always wanted .. as so is written in the psalms of the roads ,which you have understood lately all by yourself, just like most of the other bikers did.

Prologue:

 

Besides my bed there lies a flower vase...and it is full of dead white lilies, and besides me, wrapped around my arm lies my love...my love for  tonight, and  as she sleeps , the soft moon glows magnificently on her skin.. and

the tenderness of which gets mingles with the white satin  blanket that we are under, her eyes are closed, and she is dreaming something as she smiles in her sleep, while i am awake...the empty cigarette packet and an empty jar of whisky lies at a distance on the table..smiling....telling  me how empty they have been all this night..

Chapter One {The Junks} :

On the left of the table lies my accessories that i wear religiously all the time.It had grown into a small collection over the past years, something which i don't collect anymore, and since the day I had stopped collecting,..  this  armour of mine had been diminishing while I continue to throw away when they break off ,throwing away is the rule that i have learnt on the roads,it helps you in relieving the heavy weight lung crushing memories attached to it...

most of these junks  were given to me by girls with whom i have met on my path,with some i shared friendship...

with some a casual love and with the rest a deep affection..

yes i had no home......i had no bonds......i was free to roam the realms of earth....i was free to decide and form opinions...i was not chained, and so was their irony to give me a chain to wear, a connotation to chain me into bondage, again some of them gifted me bracelet, that resembled a handcuff and others a knuckle to show me a solidarity to how harsh i am.......within the junk of the many there lies a heart, a cracked metal heart ......something which i haven't thrown away although it was broken and cracked.....  it was  gifted to me by someone I knew  long time back, the time when i was traveling in the east.

Chapter Two {The Metal Heart}:

After all those times we spent with each other,she gifted me a metal heart …while i was a vagabond,she had all the attributes of a captivating libran, i was bound to hit the roads again,and she was destined to stay,we had so much in difference and yet we loved each other,for me it was the present day that mattered as i never anticipated tomorrow,for her it was the long future that she wanted to weave with me.The fabric which i never understood,and so again as the banjara passes i hit the road again,and so was her gift,a metal heart to decorate me around my neck,a small memento that would remind me of her where ever i would go..........we parted on one fine  dawn, the fluorescent luminescence of the motel in which we stayed  were still on display, glowing....reminding me how attractive it appears, begging me to stay there for one more night, but i was not destined to buy time....and so i went ,parting with the girl i loved,into the darkness of the morning dawn...as the sun peeped through the horizon.

Chapter Three {One Fine Night In The Motel} :

One fine night in the motel,i realised how alone i am , i was surrounded by friends and company, which i made in this motel, and they were drinking,singing making merry and dancing while i was alone. The sense of melancholy had taken me over by its sharp tantalizing claws and  I was right there among them ...alone within a crowd. It took me a while to realize how aggravated the situation was, while I stood in front of the mirror and had a good look at myself,  there I was to categorize my priorities again of what i want with my life...and there she was,the metal heart looking right into my eyes,out shining the other chains bracelets and knuckles i was wearing,a prophetic realisation,out of all the junk accessories i was wearing i fell in love with the metal heart again...as so she became my precious one,the tanned metal heart i realised is two years old now,the chain had become brittle and was on the verge of breaking away... but i never wanted it to keep it off my neck.

Chapter Four { The Ever lasting Memory}:

Days passed into months on roads and one day while i was travelling through the desert the metal heart cracked and the chain snapped,i took me sometime to realise how important the loss was,for a vagabond like me his accessories that he wore were his image,as no one knew his past where he has come from and where he will go..all they looked were at his transition and made the little out of him by observing what he is wearing ,also for every junks i wore had a short story of its own,had a short past and a sweet memory attached to it...memories and attachments impregnable to the naked eye of the stranger,they were all meant to cherish me when ever i will look at them at my tranquil times.Memories....those were ever fading memories....to most of the junks i cant recall everything like when that particular someone gave it to me and why,and what relationship i shared with them,but this cracked metal heart was different,it reminded me of her long tresses and the black mole above her lips, her soft brown skin,her soothing voice and everything i can associate her with.

Chapter Five {Going To Meet Her Again}:

In the middle of the desert,it took me a very short time to realise that i want her again,i wanted her to be my part,not merely a memento to be hung around my neck,so I retracted,i wanted to meet her again,and in front of me there were miles and miles of road that i had crossed in the past two years after leaving her ,and again which i was traversing on the hope  to meet her once again.I never enjoyed,the road that lay in between us... as there were nothing new to learn , to stop, see and observe,as i had went through this path before,so there was only one thing that kept me going through day and night,it was her everlasting face..and so i was on her doorstep once again on one fine evening ,with the sun peeping through the horizon.

Chapter Six {The White Lily}  :

There she was looking at me with her unbelievable startling eyes,while i kept a soft smile on my face,without speaking any word i gave her my metal heart and asked her to mend it,to make it new once more,so that i can wear it on my neck again....and she took it on her hands and told me how absurd it is to mend it,for junks like these once broken cannot be repaired,

"so why don't you replace it with a new one" i asked...she smiled away...telling me how i have come all the way only for a replacement..."you remember me till now don't you"? she asked...

 

"yes i do"... i replied...for i love you now...i can leave being a vagabond for you...........i want you to be my part, want to stay with you for all the rest of  my life

.......for i have suffered a lot without you..........these mementos are not enough to live a life that once i thought   were enough...... i am ready to drop my bike and be with you once again for the rest of my life..

and there was numbness in her face and stillness in her eyes,while she answered

that there was a biker who came to her doorsteps after i left,he fell in love with her just as i did but the only difference was he defied the psalms of the roads and stayed with her while i was travelling.He came,He loved and He stayed.

"so you don't love me now do you"? i asked

"i don't know why i loved you... and i don't know why i love you till now..you were different and perhaps i fell in love with you for that reason only,so if now you change and come to stay with me i cant promise that i would love you the same as i did,may be there would be compassion but not love for you,will you be able to live with that?you were a free bird,and i don't want to cage you for i have got my own bird and i am happy with him knowing that this small village is perhaps a prison for him...but he is staying in this prison just for me.. do you want me to leave him after the rules he has broken of the psalms? don't you think he will be forsaken after i do so? the choice is yours..more over how i can guarantee that one day you inner instincts to hit the road again will not rise and you will leave me one fine dusk again? you don't think of the future do you? your overture emotions are just for one day as you don't think that persistently....... if you had been in my shoes what would you have done?" she replied.

There was a long silence,all she wanted to make me know i understood,and so was i about to leave,but i stayed a bit longer......

"wont you give me any mementos? perhaps a replacement for the cracked metal heart" ? i asked

after a short pause , she handed me over a white lily.. from the flower vase by her side

"but it is going to wither" i said

"yes it will and for that reason i am giving you so...

so that you will make a choice.."

what choice? i asked

"the white lily withers in two days...and to get a new white lily from me you have to come to me once again, keep in mind two days it takes to withers...that means you have to travel with in a time span of two days to reach me...and if you do so will be wandering about only by the outskirts of this town,that means you will not see any new roads again,no new paths to traverse and nothing new to learn...you will be in a loop travelling back and forth on the same path over and over again" she said.

"Do you want me to do that?... it will put an end to the very idea of what i am".. i replied

"No" she answered

"you are different not like rest of the others.. you have already destroyed much time in coming back to meet me which could otherwise have been spent travelling new roads meeting new people.. learning new observations.this is what defines you and i don't want you to be like a bird in a cage or a bird in a prison.. you know no limitations,and you must be set free... break off the loop,and do keep this lily,and when it whithers throw it away.. no need to keep extra baggage....and remember this two day memento is not a token to resemble that my love for you had  diminished.. its just another memento..

and by now you must have learnt and if you don't then do remember that on the roads you don't make friends ,you make acquaintances...friends,lovers, bondage's affects your soul,it plays with your rationality,influences your decision,so keep off bondage's and have the true mind of a biker....for you are and will always be my vagabond.. do come to me someday when i will grow old...for now you must leave "

Chapter Seven :{On The Roads Again}:

While she completed what she had to say she turned to go away while i took the metal heart that she kept on the table along with the white lily,and went on with my ride,I didn’t knew the road where I would head to but I knew the rules of the roads …thereby believing in every words that she said,believing that i will break off the loop,believing that i must have done injustice to myself if i would have stayed a life of a caged bird...believing that i have many more things to see, observe and learn from this roads.These roads which are ever non ending..connected to each other in some way or the other similar to how the veins in a human body run ,and i promised to be its blood.... just like the blood returns after one complete circulation to the heart as it is destined to... no time earlier or no time after ..just like that i made a promise to come to her once again after i have completed one full circle of these roads....one day when I would have travelled this whole path..

Epilogue :

The morning is about to come and i woke up from my dream,my love for the night was looking at me,i smiled...

the morning broke and i was about to leave

i wore all my junks and left all my withered flowers on the motel that were given to me by my acquaintances whom I have met on the road, thereafter i realised the importance of flowers over something more permanent like a metal memento...perhaps for that reason flowers are immortalised in love and no one thought why..it is all about the extra baggage's that one can throw after the two day ritual of mourning...

and there I was all set on to ride and hit the roads again... and the lady smiled

"so don't you want a memento to remember me ?" she asked

"just hand me over a white lily " i replied

“The roads you must choose and be what you are destined to........for some follow the psalms all their life time,while some break it and others redefines it by adding clarity and refinement.”

THE DEEP SILENT WATER

The deep silent water ,and the ship on which i'm sailing


the honey dew full moon on the sky and the silhoutte of the distant ship sailing on the horizon,...

and this inevitable journey filled with emotion....

the trance of the alcohol .... and the sailor playing the lyre...

the far away horizon where the silent water meets the faint blue sky...

where the cool breeze runs through my hair .... where the mositure of the sea

water touches my skin.............

the dream of a distant land .... and the the joy to write to her ...

how this night feels extraordinary than rest of which i had

with the illusion of her face right infront of me ...........

and a mixed feeling of life & death ...... fatigue & hope...

seven years in sea and how is she? seven years in sea what has she become now?

does she remembers me the same as i do?

the oblivion's curse making me forget her face

all that is left of her is a sketch and an unknown presence by my side

the scent of the blue jasmine and the blue sky beholded in my eyes

the dew drops on my eye lash and the journey continues

in search of a distant land....

one profane thought

i never wanted to pen it down .... it is not another story but some few word that i  want to share .... with whom i dont knw .... consider this as my monologue.........this aint my facebook update or my gtalk status message because i never  want people to know ........ or  perhaps the best thing i could have done is  to have written it on a peice of paper and thrown it out of my window or rather burn it on second choice......... second choice the word is catchy and dicey , what is my life i some time  ponder ... what is it ? its impertinent .... to retrospect about my life  and immerse myself into memories is the thing that lame philosophers do .......... i dont belong to that school of thoughts..... and still here i am sitting infront of the computer and typing something into my defunct blog that had long been  inactive............ straight to the topic ............ my transition ................ from an idiot who never understood simple equation in class 4 and wanted to pursue music  to a kid who was half way inactive in class 8 ,to a lad  who was a favorite of class teacher in class 10 because he discovered pythagoras theroem all by himself .......... to a simpleton teenager who solved equation at a  much faster rate than his friends in class 11 to a teenager who calculated schrodinger's wave equation in class 12 and formulated neil bohr's atomic model during his P.T class ........... then he dreamt of becoming a scientist .........and ultimately turned to became an engineer ...... not under compulsion but because of rat race.......its natures' law they say............... and then ultimately eager to become a business person one day ..................... life has been full of twist and turns for me ..........no straight path here ...........life is full of surprises ...who knows it better than me ............ and here i'm halfway immersed into my self pity emotion and thinking how my ideals have changed over time ...from van gogh to beethoven to ramanujan to einstein to some british engineer who designed howrah bridge .......... and now howard hughes......and still thinking  and wondering who would come next ......

IN SEARCH OF SOMETHING

In search of something under the vastness of the starry skies,










In search of something walking over the lush green grass.









Like a bullet fired from the gun in search of it's destination,









Speeding away from the action of gravity,









The noise of the pulling crowd not touching it anymore









while it cruise's at unfathomable speed,tearing apart the air









In chase of it's target,that was in the place while it was launched









following the curved trajectory of a beginning and an end,









but the destination that was possible reaching have been moved to distant apart









Destination now lies lost, the hope for reaching dangling in mid air









Wish the unknown shooter could have changed equation,









No obstructions,and no restrictions,









Making it reach to its' destination,









Wish the speed could have been more,









With the falling gravitiy's no restriction,









and resisting airs' no obstruction........













Here I  travel in the middle of the night










Hoping to reach my destination









launched in life like a bullet from a gun,









Ignited by the unknown passion









In search of its' destination,









In search of something in the blurry fog that lies ahead









In search of something under the infinite sky









In search of something ............

THE YOUNG MAN AND THE SEA

PROLOGUE:

Here I am sitting on the sea shore and the rising wave splashes water on my face.My moist eyes are red enough to resemble the red clouds of the night sky,under whose cloak I am sitting here right now. The saline taste of the sea water has mingled with my tears ....and rolled down to my lips while I could not make out the difference between the two.... some times it makes me think that I have cried an entire ocean in front of me ..... but still the saline taste has not stopped falling onto my lips.....

PEBBLES:

The moon is about to go and the sun is about to come .. and in this twilight zone I am all alone lying against a boulder on the sea shore with a cold face, forcing my mind to stop thinking about her.
The pebbles surrounding me has a story of its own while I look upon them..... it bears the experience of its ages .Scars, cuts and wounds have taken the smooth surface of the pebbles to turn it into a rough textured stone. Geologist calls this " the stone with a missing face "....the stone that has been weathered by the forces of nature to turn it into a coarse rock mass.
My eyes fell on my hand,the surgeon's stitch on my slit wrist is about six months old .While I don't know how long this heart has suffered..... "love" they say in philosopher's language... never knew what they actually meant but if "pain" and "emotion" it was supposed to mean .....then I must say I have felt it.

SAND:

While this beautiful night is about to come to an end ..... it reminds that I am also on the verge of completing a full circle ... I don't know when the sun has set yesterday, but I am determined to see the sun rise today.... similarly I never knew since when I started loving her but I know when it is going to end.
A friendship band has been hanging around my wrist which I had kept religiously as a memento, constantly reminding me of her,incidentally that is also her only sign that is now left with me other than her photograph in my wallet
The bed of sand on which I am sitting right now has some strange properties. When it's dry you cannot grip it with your palm..... ever since child hood I have tried it a dozen times ......but as always it slips by my palm.... but on this particular occasion with the rising tide in front of me , with the gushes of water making this sand moist,invariably I could hold it in my hand , it does not slip by my Palm now......
and when I rose to my feet again I realized my skin is caked with sand. On second thoughts I realized that the sand particle's clinging to me are all moist ...never ever I have been caked with sand before... "strange it is.." i felt ....

for all my life I was never able to grip sand and it is the sand that is gripping me now

I stood up jerked the sand out of my body, took the band out of my wrist as well as the photograph too from my wallet and placed it on the sand,sprinkled it with the fuel out of my lighter and ignited it..
and there it goes the last remaining memorabilia of her in the smoke.....
you may ask me why I have done it? I don't know exactly myself why I have done it too...
subconsciously perhaps I felt this was the only decision that I was left with......
or perhaps to complete my full Circle.

SEA:

The smoke went away to be a part of the cloud while the ashes got washed away to the sea ..... the morning sun rose and red clouds turned white .... it made me think that although i felt like crying but my eyes have turned to normal colour of white too ...burying my emotion deep into myself ...just like the rising sun has hidden the moon away from my sight.
on my way back from the shore ....... I heard the fisherman shouting among themselves, that the sea water has turned more salty than it was supposed to be ..... I never knew what they actually meant, or who was to blame for this phenomenon. .....
however I carried on with my tread......leaving behind locus of my foot prints on the wet sand and slowly vanishing into the "normal" crowd.

EPILOGUE:

while I was walking, a couple smiled at me and asked "have you been lying at the sea shore ?"
"why"...? I asked
"well ...... the back part of your clothing which is away from your eye-sight is caked with moist sand " the young man answered.
while I walked away smiling ........ remembering john bunyan's words
"I carry with me the marks and scars of battles - they are the
witnesses of what I suffered and the rewards of what I conquered "

CLOUDS

"............Remember the clouds and the winds ..... never forget them .........write to me when you are far away and burn them .May the smoke be carried by the winds and reach to me through the rain droplets of the clouds ......
these clouds......... you see up there is a bank of letters written by thousands of lovers away from home ...and when i will look up the to cloud the first droplet of rain water touching my face will remind me of you ..... remember then, that your message had been delivered .............. " said Habibah to Ebo.



PROLOGUE :

Everything that has an ending must have had a starting, in between birth and death, there is a period when we live ...those moments are called life.Similarly in between sleep and awakening there is a small period of sub consciousness,
when the dream of the past night is as fresh as morning dew ....the story of Ebo doesn't deal with birth, life and death ,instead of that period of sub consciousness during which one can recall his dream ,being aware of the fact that he is going to forget it the next morning he wakes up ......


DREAM :



Ebo has been walking ever since the last time he met her......... walking through the villages and by the seashores. From the plains of the fields, to the mountains and forests and then ultimately to the desert ......
he did not knew the desert ,but he knew his search for his destiny went through this path ..... he never realized that it was not him who was in search of his destination,
but it was the other way round....it was his destiny that made him come here .... perhaps made him come so far from her..... and this destiny is destined to take him to his destination ......... the destination that lay far ahead of him passed through the longest desert path trodden by the banjaras .It lay right in front of him, the farthest sight of it was non ending..............
during his way through the plains and the mountains , he kept his promise and wrote to her every day and then burnt it religiously ,believing the wind will take it away and the clouds will deliver it.......
and then came the reply ......
he soaked himself in rain...as it carried the presence of her .... through the rain he communicated with her......

he knew what she must have written ....as the rain didn't missed a part...... and when he danced with joy in the rain murmuring to the water droplets .....his friends thought he had gone mad......but only he knew the secret....


Then came the desert ,he wrote the letters by tearing up pages from his diary that he had procured before entering this long desert, and burning them ,the desert wind took it away,but only with a promise that it's reply will never come ....... "its the desert you have been walking through...." told the desert to Ebo ,and the rain doesn't fall here .......


REMNANT :





The desert path came to be longer than what he expected it to be ....and now its one day short of one year since he started walking in the desert and the pages of diary all burnt but one left...... the 365 th day ..the last blank page of the diary ..was awaiting to be written, burnt and carried away by the wind and to be delivered by the clouds ........
all the pages that he wrote before from his diary carried his life story ....and now he is left with a single page ......
the two thick cardboard , binding the diary resembled birth and death to him .....and this last page in between it,the last day of his life...
he never wrote on that last page during his path...and no one knew why....perhaps he believed in the fact that by tearing up this last page ..... he will come to the back cover of the diary resembling death.....and he didn't wanted to die in the desert....or perhaps there were too many a thoughts,emotions and feelings to be penned down in just one single page.....or perhaps he was waiting......... telling himself "don't write today do it tomorrow ....." perhaps that feeling
of writing to her tomorrow made him contend....... and that tomorrow never came..
he had been walking the desert ever since then, breaking her promise .....
all his experiences of the desert he bore in his mind hoping to share them with her one day ...one day when he will meet her again.
when the 3rd year arrived , he was close to his destination .....


AWAKENING :




The desert path had lead him to his destination.. and then he tore the last page of his diary and wrote " wish you were here." and burnt it ....the smoke curled up against the sky and went away ...... at this point of time he didn't saw death on the back cover cardboard,instead he saw "awakening" .... he now realized what the front cover cardboard and the pages in between them originally resembled ......
he felt the true essence of love, "how his belief in love has made him come so far.."- he thought .....
coming at conjunction with his destination would never have been possible without love ...... strange is love .......he wondered .........only a matter of interpretation......


DESTINATION :


He was sitting at his destination awaiting the rain to arrive ,but the weather had been erratic ,and then one day the rain did came, the rain droplets touched his face,but strangely it didn't carry any emotion along with it....
" did she write to me ?.." he asked to himself
"6 years you have been away from her,for three years you never wrote to her,who knows where is she?
has she written to you? no one knows,
has she forgotten you ? that can never be..
why are you forgetting the desert lies in between you and her ?
no rain bearing winds has ever passed from that side of the desert to this.......and perhaps the clouds for which you are waiting for ,has already fallen on the other part of the desert......
.to know what has she written to you or has she stopped writing to you, you need to go to the other the part of the desert.....
do you really want to go there again ? " his soul answered


EPILOGUE :


The sun was about to set and the old banjara sitting on the sand, by his camel has just finished telling the folklore of the desert to his young fellow men......
" it's about time to carry on with our journey ......
.. a long journey to the other part of the desert awaits....we must start early " ............. the banjara said ..


while the young men who were listening to the story looked puzzled by the question put forward to Ebo by himself........

THE MOON KNOWS IT ALL

A glass of wine under the moon shine and a reflection of love on the purest crystal held on my hand..

.. a trance ridden mind hallucinating about you ......

The soft music of the murmurs enchanting around me and the language of the unknown mystifying its very own existence and i don't know why this music reminds me of her......

yet i am so far...... detached from her sitting here in the middle of the desert listening to the banjaras and looking up to the moon......

when i think what has made me come so far .......

i retrospect ..... what was it ?

i don't find any answer ...

but i know the moon knows it all......

i look upon it .... amazed .... o standing moon out there the gorgeous of all gorgeous heavenly creature you know it all ......

you have been a standing testimony for all the lover's for centuries

for all travellers like me away from home ...departed from their loved one your face has brought them solace .....

and in your glowing face i find her....

.in your shine i feel the gentle touch of her skin

she is there when i look upon you

when I believe she is there sitting at the window looking upon you at the same time ....it's that feeling that brings me a comfortable joy

but still here I am sitting in the middle of the desert not knowing when i will see her again

or perhaps in this life time ever again?

would this distance in between her and me will ever be surpassed?

for i am too timid to ask this question over and over again

for i know that every truth i seek does not hold the key to my happiness

but i do know that the moon knows it all .........