Clouds in the valley...

The pressure inside the client room seemed insanely intense. Sweaty palms, nervous voices, scratchy heads filled the room. Which was obvious - five years, millions of dollars later, the core banking system of the client was in an absolute mess, the future bleak, with even a good chance of the regulator snatching away its licence. What was not obvious was, why I felt so oblivious and far removed from all this hullabaloo. I knew why - and I turned my head to look outside at that muse of mine, standing far away on the hilly horizons - wind in her hair, she was looking up into the clear blue skies peacefully, while dancing slowly to the windy whistle of Wellington. On her own, she conquered all of the eastern skies and kept reminding me I should have been outside on the jade green hills with her, instead of being jaded inside with the ennui of costs and bills.  Muse indeed, for the white windmill seemed to move timelessly in a slow-motion haze, drifting me to a different universe - In ...

  I The kas blooms sway, The winds stirs,  And always, it is the heart that sighs... There I was, standing on the sandy banks of the Gomti river - classes and kebabs all taken a backseat - brooding with a tinge of melancholy as I stared silently at the swaying kas flowers that grew in abundance by the riverside, welcoming autumn. A semester crammed with exams, projects and submissions had passed by in a jiffy in Lucknow, and it was not until that moment that I realised that soon, it would be Durga Puja time back home in Bengal. It was my first year ever, outside home - obvious then, that I was being washed with waves of nostalgia and homesickness. But more than the melancholy that day, there was a sense of familiarity - here in this faraway land, there seemed an invisible thread that connected me to my homeland through the kas cornucopia that thrived on the river. It was a strange kind of love that can only be explained when you are so desiccated that you are happy to grasp at...

All the songs you never wrote Fill a raindrop in the eye, What you wrote, rises like a n’orwester  A smile upon a summer sky For your works are sealed in golden words That even time cannot forget, The notes transcend these mortal souls Beyond banal love and hate But more than all the moving words, A grander gift you’ve sown You have inspired souls with that urge to write - Each now, an artist on his own That melancholy in subtle grace Has countered endless tears, In the darkest night, your verses strong Has helped conquer those fears And many have picked, in that wake The quill of written dreams Wrapping griefs and joys of life In countless paper reams  An autumn line has sparked a book, A single word - a song, That ‘small rivulet’ has turned a sea, That legacy is so strong And even those who ink not words, On your rostrum works, they stand Creating Gora, a Postmaster Lost in a dreamy land The n’orwester rains here everyday, These summers are not dry, For you’ve ensured there’...

  ‘Why do you love the rains so much?’ They often ask me this; A tropical sun comes back to mind - Of course, the rains bring bliss Home was a land once steamed with heat, Repose in the Arabian breeze, A crack of thunder thus brought joy And the nimbus clouds, some peace ‘They liberate you,’ I utter soft, My mind still in the past, I see the city from my thirteenth floor -  The rains have conquered fast Who then to stop the child inside? He scrambles to the street, The gulmohurs share his summer joy, The amaltas his heartbeat Sometimes the rains were an excuse even To skip work for a break, A cycling trip to the Kanheri Hills, Or the Necklace, or the Lake Or just lie down in the gardens green And watch the rains come down And the world could fade in the lullaby rains -  The men, the din, the town After the drenched clothes and the souls, At home, a cup of tea, To watch the last rains cool the earth, The porch, a book, and me Yes, I sieve the diamonds from the dirt, The m...

For all the peaks you’ve never seen, There is a song, a prayer: Of snow-clad peace in white and blue, And smiles in the mountain air That song is spun from plumes of snow, That the peaks present to the sky, Which rushes then to gather notes: Melodies, sometimes a sigh The gurgling brooks add a metre of melt, To the song of the peaks unseen, The chorus comes from the velvety vales, And the bugyals you’ve never been The mountain freshness binds the song, With the northern winds, it flies, Until it comes to the lesser lands,  To the city of shade and lies And there it falls with a pitter of hope, A patter of dusky rains, There is sadness in its petrichor, Yet, salvation for your pains For it brings alive the mountain song,  And the hillman inside you, And gushes forth an alpenglow, In red and orange hue What does it say, that mystique song? Does it open then the cage? It reminds you of the journeys left -  The unmade pilgrimage There are meadows left to trod and climb, Many ...

We never do justice to our memories, do we? I mean every single day is full of eventful moments, and the collection in our human minds is overwhelming indeed. But more importantly, we are so busy adding to these petabytes, there is seldom time to sieve a few of them, dry them out in the sun-kissed warmth of a yesterday, or roll these gems in our fingers, feeling their rich exquisite cuts, iridescent in the last rays of an Autumn sun. Yes, a stray memory blows with the winds here, a shard glimmers like a mirage in a n’orwester there, but that’s about it. We are too busy accelerating on the F1 circuit of our everyday, that seldom do we sit down and look back at that wildflower-laden path upon the meadows. Yesterday more often than not, looks less exciting, slow and often not worth pondering upon. Add to this the wiseacre corporate gurus who tell you to look ahead, not behind blah-blah-blah…  But sometimes, maybe sometimes, it is worth sitting with a cup of steaming tea on a ruddy eve...

Having visited the Kedar-Gauri temple, I decided to take a walk in a nearby green park that seemed devoid of the pilgrims that otherwise thronged the Kedar-Gauri. It was precisely these numbers I wanted to avoid, for which I had skipped the Lingaraja and the Mukteswara temples. In the large temple complex of the latter, I found the Kedar-Gauri, paid my offering and walked around. It was then that I found around the park, yet another rock cut temple, small, but as beautiful and ornate as any other. It was, however, on reading an ASI placard at the entrance, that I was literally left breathtaken!  The small but ornate sandstone edifice was the Parashurameshwar Temple, the oldest temple in Bhubaneshwar, dating all the way back to the 7th Century A.D. Yes, I had read of the splendour of Konark, Jagannath and Lingaraja, and these were old enough, dating back to the tenth and twelfth centuries. But here was another one, which predated the big three by four centuries, if not more. For the...