Soft Solitude

There he’s-hark the good old moon

Scared every night

As he ventures into the dark

Little does he know

What wins over the night

Is his heavenly light

There he is hiding behind the clouds

Mischief in his mind

Playing with his own brilliance

What the stars fail to see,

Is the loneliness in his game

For his helplessness brings him too much shame

As the morning comes,

The sun maliciously bidding him goodbye

He goes back leaving me alone

To wither in this wretched heat

Little does he know

Everyday I blossom for him

For it’s his soft gaze that makes me glow

I don’t know what I’d do

If he’d not be there to see me through

the end of every day and the rise of every night

Cry me a River

Cry me a river

For these rivers from ages of darkness

Have run dry

So my dear stranger

Cry me a river

They well up these rusty eyes

For they’ve only seen decades of hatred

With only one wish of a wishful heart

To die with a smile

For there will be some one who will

Cry me a river

For the land is too red with blood spilled

The trees have skeletons for fruits

And the sky growls in anger and rage

In this mist of hell’s relentless fury

Cry me a river

For it’s been too long

Living in a loveless land

Under a red suns and a dreamless nights

Give me a reason

To believe in the world beyond

Full of love and liking

Give me a reason

To die with a smile

So my dear stranger…cry me a river

a day in the life of nobody

‘He’s not here but far away

The noise of life begins again

And ghastly through the drizzling rain

On the bald street breaks the bald day’

I just finished reading a book ‘every time we say goodbye’ by Anna Blundy. It’s about a daughter missing her father after he dies in a war ravaged El Salvador. Being a father obsessed young lady; I seem to sort of understand how shattered she was when she heard of her father’s death on the news. You should read it probably makes you realize how we take people for granted every single day.

So here I’m far away in a town that doesn’t speak my language sending out a message to the millions hoping my voice doesn’t drown in the consistent drone of the servers next you.

When emptiness seems to fill your senses and your emotions tend to be indefinable, when you are in an empty room with walls for company and you’ rather be away from your one single friend in the crowd, you should know you’re missing home.

In the past four years, my life has been in such turmoil. Everyday I’m constantly reminded of the fact that I’m a terrible writer. I haven’t read enough books to be called well-read and I haven’t heard enough music to claim to be a music buff. And yet when I hear people quoting D. H. Lawrence and James Joyce, I feel someone’s playing Beethoven’s symphony in my heart. My heart jumps at the sight of a Shakespearean play not because I love Shakespeare, but because I always wanted to play a Macbeth or Hamlet or a beautiful Juliet. For at the end of my hard earned day, when I ask myself who am I? The four walls around me mock my silence.

So to the world out there, please give an answer lest my faith in my importance dies out. Who am I?

End of an Era

Four years in a place that has taught nothing but to stop feeling, to stop living, to stop whatever you start if it is not helping you with a job. I feel free to have left the place I will leave behind good memories, more like desperate attempts of breaking free, attempts made by people I have learnt to love and cherish. According to Einstein, institutions have a moral obligation to the society to teach the individual how exactly to contribute to the betterment of the society. Considering Einstein was the greatest minds of the 21^st century, I’d like to believe him to be true. So how exactly has my college taught me to free the society of its so called polluted nuances? Well, it starts with learning to live with it, learning how to not rip your hair out when you wait in the line at the Finance Office and the counter closes just when your turn is on. It continues with smiling despite the fact that four of the five offices you have gone to have turned down your request for one lousy signature of a guy you’ve never seen in your life. So, yes the college has taught me a lot.

There is an upside though, when I leave this college, I’ll miss the various nice things which we could never use. The beautiful lawns where we couldn’t walk bare feet, the expensive books in the library we just couldn’t touch, the overly expensive International Mess where we couldn’t eat, the college does have its perks. My friends call it cynicism, I call it mere optimistic attitude, and where in even the worst of places in this world is more than bearable because, hey it could’ve been worse. I could’ve been sitting without any work on Saturday nights, partying away to conventionality, instead I chose to sit alone in a room and do assignments due the next week. I could’ve been wasting time, dating guys to get over boredom, instead I chose to become a nerd (I still blush at the thought of that cute guy calling me a nerd and stomping away when I turned him down for an examination).

‘What will you miss the most?’ my proud father asked me when we drove off the Main Gate, I thought long and hard and couldn’t find answers, I could say friends but I know I’d be laughing years later at the thought that I even imagined I’ll lose them after college. “Life”, was m answer I don’t know why I muttered such a stupid answer, it’s not like I am going to die and most people say that fun begins after college. But yes I will miss the life that I lived.

The eating in the middle of the night talking about what our future may hold, the getting wet in the rain the first time because of potentially crazy friends, the praying together at the advent of the scary results, the laughing at…well, absolutely nothing and laughing still. What I write here is not a memoir, no, it is a tribute to all those people who morphed me for good or for bad.

I will miss the lecturers who made my life hell, the friends who refused to tell the truth, the guys who started weird rumors about me, and most importantly, the rumors I started about themJ. My friends think college has made me quieter and more resilient or as some say I can take anything from anyone now. This would have to do with all that I went through here. I look back and smile that saintly smile and think oh my god I actually let these people get to me! But just as I begin to think that the end of an era concept is overrated I remember the number of times we all missed our respective homes, the times we fought and pretended not to care about each other, the times we laughed together and oh the one time we all got so scared after watching ‘The Exorcist’ we all had to go in groups down the empty hostel corridors and wait faithfully while the other answered nature’s call. The midnight noodles spree, for a moment I thought we’ll all end up eating so much of the one minute noodles that even the folks in Japan would want us to stop!

But what I learnt is beyond all this. What I learnt is to keep secrets, to tell even the worst of all truths to your best friends, to pretend to like everyone but to like only your best friends, to be as nice to people who are nice to you. Yes, it’s the end of an era, an era of honesty, truth, laughter and a shared sorrow. In the four years of my college, I learnt…how to live.