THE INVERTED FACE OF MOON

All of you~wherever you are now in life, you must have had a journey about which you have a lot to talk about. We all know Life's journey to the top can be like a perilous trek through a difficult mountain. I don't know exactly about yours but still may guess somewhat...

The chalet I live in may look very reassuring. But it may not be exactly so. Landslides can take it down anytime. Landslides of life! We know nothing about.When you thought life is rocking, they come rolling. My mountain otherwise also, been steep daunting and harsh. Yawning gorges were waiting at every bend. The path was slippery. Doom lurked in the garb of indolence, audacity, deviousness, misunderstanding ... and above all fate. It has been a journey sometimes fraught with more that I can handle. You may or may not have had a life like me. But I am sure your experience would be a mixed bag too.

In my life Doom handed me a privilege. I happened to visit the station of death. Don't you know where it is? It is there every where. The one I went, I met
fellow passengers awaiting the death train in the platform of doom. They were scared~ shattered; dead much before being actually in the clutches of death. Dead by the ruthless decision of life.Killed by the sense of betrayal. They had their basket full of wishes meowing like fluffy kittens. But their death warrant was signed. They were all terminally ill. None of them I spoke actually believed Life could deal such a blow, for most of them played by the fair rule of life. Karma...they sighed and said... And I agreed to that too....

Have u seen a family of five holding the arms and trudging along bearing the weight of their terminally ill, sole bread earner? Have you seen how the poor manage their way in this world? Staying and cooking on pavements trying to sell garbage, to meet the expenses for the treatment whom they love. Love that would make cupid hide in shame. Do you remember when your kid was two years old? Or do you remember a healthy two year old you have seen recently. Two year old...the terrible two. The ever inquisitive sweet menace toddling into your private world like a gale force typhoon, pulling, dropping, smashing things, giggling at your inevitable 'man on the wire' reactions. Did you? I did.

And here I have seen another kind of a two year old ...screaming...turning ashen becoz of the pain. There was a malignant cyst in his inner ear. Poor little piece of heart. Unable to sleep, moaning, curving those pale tender lips... moment his eyes met yours ...Heart rendering! Doc was pushing something in him probably morphin.. "Poor baby ~ Don't cry, mommy is here"..No! his mom did not have the strength even to say that..

Those were the times You felt like asking God Why there is so much suffering to man kind? Why do we come to earth? What is our goal? What is love, what is acrimony, what is rudeness what is biasness what is craving what is conceit what is snide what is snob... only and only one thing in life counts that is wisdom. Knowledge and knowledge alone that dispels darkness, withers pain, spreads happiness make life a thankful experience not a unendurable bane...is the true goal the real wealth.


I don't know how I missed the train but I came back. God lent me some time. In this world I could not think of anyone who would look after my kid if I was gone. Nevertheless my spouse,... my kid was my responsibility. The night was long and suddenly I had been seeing the other side of the moon. I noted how much scarred that face is. That is the side those people only see who are robbed of their jobs their home their dignity their respect and in return gain pity. Men who have no savings, lose their job yet have to run a family. In a packed house destiny puts them on a stage and time needs them to be conjurers. He hands over a torn hat and tells them to take out rabbits from them. Oh You can't?....so go kill yourself!

God put me thru a glimpse only of the inverted moon before he redeemed me but it was enough to take a fresh view of life. I know the train will come back before long. Then there will be that time to board it..and i won't like to have a fond farewell... I would just like to go whoosh...

I have seen how people forget each other in their lifetime. Death will be happy to be absolved of much part of the blame of a matter-of-fact oblivion. Pity how I wished to be remembered fondly. Pity no one will.

Each man and women at least for once falls in love with his life. Even A suicide bomber who blows himself up also does it in the love of his cult or in the love of his cause. Imagine the guys who were flying the plane to hit World Trade Centre, Didn't he know the outcome of a 1000km/hr Boeing when it will take a million tonnes of cement and iron, head on? Great courage!~ but so misplaced so misconstrued so misguided! But again the love to the cause, the burning desire of issuing statements in outrageously heroic ways...love to be heroes. I am sure like me you have also fallen in love with life for sometime or the other.

And it was also in my walk to that station that I have met beauty, irreprehensible beauty that invents love and is so sublime.I have met characters that continued to support me stand by me may be just by their smiles and best wishes. In my darkest hours I have recd calls from people who I thought had little to do with me. Not only my friends even their wives, their husbands, siblings and kids. It did not stop there .... maid's son, cleaner's wife or driver's father..they all called me. In solidarity they showed they felt my pain. I may not have got calls from them, for whom, I could once happily give up my life... they had long forgotten me but would you believe I got calls from them whom I had actually ignored or rejected and thought not good enough to be friends. They called they didn't have fun on my sufferings, they foergave me and they blessed me. I did not understand my own true feelings then..Was I ashamed or overwhelmed?

Old friends

Success is always very sweet to the achiever. Sometime quick and enormous success brings about an aura of glitz and glam. Success is also like a fire. It catches up fast and takes a lot into its fold.. It is but natural like any fire along with light success will emit some smoke too. This is envy. The datum will always envy the peak. Gravitation always pulls down but it also gives you a feel of your own weight. It is an art to levitate in the sky of success.

But when it comes to envy, true Friends are different. Yes, true is a very hypothetical word. But true friends are never in competition. An old friend's success make the old friends proud too. Friends ain't no predators. They want no nothin' from ye. The friend may, or, may not be in a nest like yours.....He could be in a different world all together. For one struggle may be the way of life. For another, isolation might be his veritable ambience with the Sun and the solitude as his company. There can be want in someone's world, heart break in other's while frustration bugs yet another while another has amassed humongous prosperity. But at one place they are all one.


Albeit his own state the very mention of a friend still brings a glitter in an old friend's eyes, a happy smile in his lips a distant untouched dream back in his mind 'Friend to Friend,' its only a bonding of mind and mood... through the window of Memory. There is no conventional right nor traditional access between friends..but there are no formalities and pretention either. Two friends for a while make a world of their own of so many fond things, such as memory smiles and sigh.

Dear old forgotten friends may just hanker after a moment of the good old days. You may not know but a friend may have been looking up to the sky for once if any of his old friends and that could be you would come down to his shores.... or from just as far as that floating cloud in the blue sky would hover in his sky for a passing moment or so ... for once may be...Yesterday once more. He will then treasure his friend's trembling shadow once more in the windswept waters of his mind. Expectations don't have to be just always...

As time passes the worlds changes. The distance between friends even looms larger. Hearts change, aspirations differ, chasm widens, and yet deep inside you, you still hold a small cake of affection in the golden attic of your heart ~ upon which all the magic moments with your old friends, keep flaming like a candle. You don't let nothing snub that..not no one..... Every body in your world gets a piece of you ...but old friends gets the chasm,... the wide inseparable chasm of distance. The friend gracefully accepts the distance and then strangely the distance itself bequeaths friends to friends'.... The distance which normally put people out of mind,.. for true friends it fans the craving ...it continues to reminds friends of friends. It also hurts and it also pains. Like the Passion of Christ, the pain spreads into your veins and dissolve the feeling of true longing for true friends into your blood.... And as the distance grows with each widening inch... it reminds you ...of the truth...that friends are priceless.. Yet time enables to embrace the breach without a wince as stones fossilize pre-historic mammoths in their heart.


There was a time when you were there everywhere in your friend's heart... No roads could be as empty, no paths would be as forlorn so much so as your friend would not find you there...for everywhere they went... they carried you in their heart..you be...or you don't be. You were carried in each breath..u were felt in each beat... But ...Time again~ the best magician it is..., it takes out the destination from the path and modifies it. Such friends who swore by you in their sleep no more stay pertinent in your world. Those time and those people they become strangers in the verdict of this time and these people...the common law. But still each time you try expunge them from your mind as strangers and send them back empty handed from the doors of your heart ..no tears escape their eyes ...for they quest nothing but carry the breeze from their land and their hills to your shores...They don't want you distracted .. they only want you to be able, to say "Hello to Happiness"..