The Fireflies and Night

Photo credit: Vishal Chaudhari

Playful fireflies under the fir,
flirt with Night's darkness;
Night's stillness insults them,
Being aloof and utterly cold.

Flashy display of love,
trying to get her attention!
And Night couldn't care less;
For her taste is grave and sombre...
For Night is of the pristine moon,
Of dark clouds, of soft shadows,
Her fancy captured by Serenity
As Silence on her froze.

Fireflies distract her calm,
Silly jarring distasteful lights!

Yet the fireflies pine for Night:
They burn themselves
trying to reach out to her,
Igniting themselves
with tacky green lights,
crying out, Let me close!
They fly about madly
for a moment of Night's attention.
The flies have their hearts on fire,
And their fault is that it shows.
And Night chooses to look through them,

Yet through Night their love glows.

The Balancing Act

Ideal and resolved
Principled and uninvolved;
A sudden skewed stroke
All resolve at once broke

Isn’t Reason supreme?
Not now anymore…
And isn’t Logic God?
Perhaps once before.

Unchained, life’s become free
The excitement of novelty!
Ecstasy on a starlit night
But scorned by broad daylight...

Something did not feel right,
Uneasy somewhere deep inside
There was no wrong or a lie
Yet conscience heaved a sigh…

Turned and looked back
On Principle’s dusty track,
Where Logic reigns,
And the Self refrains.

Slowly walked back
On the same old track,
Where Logic rules,
On righteous fools!

Evaporated

pic: Senthil


Water's spirit, resurrected by the sun,
He rises to the heavens to gather into clouds:
white and grey ghosts of nothingness,
they float, soar and sketch the horizon...
Flooding the imagination with dragons and ships
that don't exist.

He envelops disreputed places with mist,
deepening the impenetrable darkness on cold mysterious nights...
Suddenly reborn on an unsuspecting drowsy leaf,
he trickles down slowly, running a shiver down her spine,
making her toes curl.

Riding the Trade Winds,
He gallops in as the Monsoons,
stripping the earth nude of her cover
filling green paddy fields to excess
ripening mangoes until they burst
of sickening extravagance.

Through veins he carves he flows restlessly
and as his vigour is slowly spent in his own maze,
he lies undead in the sea with tranquility,
To be resurrected on sunnier days.

Rescuing Yeast

(based on an experiment i recently did...it's an ode to my beloved enzyme, and has been written in the traditional epic format, the heroic couplet, with ten syllables in every line...please excuse my nerdiness for this one)

A eukaryote, enolase devoid,
Her elegant budding with craft destroyed,
Well repress'd with doxycycline was she,
Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Essential enolase are you gone?
In-gene-iously before you could be born?
Even with glucose everywhere around
Energy to divide could not be found!
Finally help arrived with craft, at last,
From an unlikely cousin from the past.
'Twas the terrible curse, Plasmodium,
Protozoan, not a bacterium!
The pest also had an enolase gene
But could the gene help yeast was to be seen...
Plasmodium enolase put in yeast,
On glucose Saccharomyces did feast.
With contentment did the yeast grow galore
Budding, flourishing like never before;
P. f. enolase did the job with flair
O' wondrous enzyme extraordinaire!

On The Move

Strange Beings, we are,
Constantly shaped by moulds of situation,
Transforming the alien into home...
And homes that we have left behind,
Become alien?

We incessantly forge new homes,
Conquering inhibitions and rigidity,
Opening a door where there wasn't one,
Surprising ourselves with our fluidity.

And once a home is made,
Time cruelly commands us forth,
Turning a blind eye
To all the struggle that made
An alien place home;
All of it dissolves,
And crystallizes into experience;
And past homes in memories roam.

A shot of Tequila!

"A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila" - This is what reality shows have matured to in the United States while we still rot in the Roadies era. This is a show about finding true love with Tila who has the most intoxicating last name, Tequila.

Tila, a bisexual pornstar, starts with 15 boys and 15 girls, who all want their "shot at love" with her. She gives them tasks to do, like eat a pig's vagina, walk on glass (which incidentally was fake), get a tatoo on your back and other such deep heart-touching challenges. Based on their performances, which obviously reflect how much they care for her, she falls in and out of love with them, goes on dates with them, or makes out with them. In one show she was so fine with the balance of justice about grading her lovers' performances that she devised three categories of dates to reward them -the "sexy date", the "romantic date", and the "dirty date", all of which involved making out with her.

But Tila cannot keep loving all 30 of them! That would be too taxing on her! Hence lovers are eliminated in every episode, and they bid teary good-byes to their ultimate love in life. To quote one of the "jilted" lovers, "I was the one who truly loved her, she will know what she's missing, and this time I won't take her call".

In today's show, Tila brought down the number of contestants to 4, 2 guys and 2 girls. Things have started becoming serious. Now she must choose a partner for life soon. So she went and met their parents, in their hometowns, and I must say American parents are too cool: Tila dirty danced with one of their dads, made passes at another dad by sucking on a big juicy pickle and made one of their mom's show her breasts. The parents were very concerned about their children's decisions. "I am happy for them", said one teary eyed proud mom, "they look just perfect together. I hope the very best for their future".

This show shows us there is no limit to how much love an individual can have in his/her heart. It teaches us the real virtues of loving, caring and sharing. Tila is the goddess of love, the passion in her voice and the justice with which she deals with all her "lovers" would even put Aphrodite to shame.

And yes, Americans love this show so much that this is actually A Shot of Love with Tila Tequila -II

America, The First Impressions of

It's been about ten days I've been here and I think I am now eligible to write about my first impressions of the place and of course the people *grin*. They're friendly and as you enter any store they heartily ask, "How you doin' today?" to which they even expect a reply. and just to clarify, I'm NOT being sarcastic.


I received a very warm greeting as I landed in Chicago from my dad's friend Tuli Kaku, very loving Kakima and Bittu-dada. I spent my first two days in America in a posh suburb close to Chicago. Naperville was the most manicured place I've ever seen: all the lawns of all the houses looked exactly the same, all the streets were identical, even the trees were barred from growing beyond a height. The pinnacle of this artificial beauty (I have to admit the place was pretty) was the Dupage Riverwalk: a cemented walkway through the "wilderness", with the river flowing by, geese hobbling around, and even a cut down trunk designedly placed in the frothing waters of the river, to give it the wild look.

Chicago was a much more real place. The cluster of parked sailboats in Lake Michigan was a spectacle. At the centre of the city was the Millenium Park, and what amazed me most was "The Bean": a large metallic bean shaped thing which mirrors the Chicago skyline. The city was alive with people and it being a weekend, with families and kids.


Then I came to Purdue, the home of the Boilermakers, as their football team is lovingly called. As I was approaching the place I realized the consul-officer who interviewed me for my US visa wasn't joking; the place IS in the middle of cornfields. Acres and acres of cornfields. The country amazes me with it's proportions. Nothing is small here: their Macdonald's burgers, their CocaCola glasses, vast croplands, the people, all are big.

Honestly I hated my first day at Purdue, the place grew on me slowly. There were no people around, I had no friends on campus, the weather was cold and the culture-shock: Everyone sticks to themselves and tends to themselves. To give an example, I made sandwiches and I asked one of my housemates if he wanted some. He politely refused. We in India would take a bite even if we're not hungry just for the heck of it. But here this formality when it comes to stuff like food, is something I did not understand, something I took a little while to get used to.

Bright sunny days light up spirits and soon things started looking up. I started experiments and they were working, I made friends with my labmates, and one of them drove me to Indianapolis over the weekend. I met some other Indians on campus, among them a Bengali and relished a language-treat, most fulfilling. It's amazing how a little connection with home made me real happy.


I have been missing Bombay, but I am enjoying Purdue as well. Soon I will get myself a bike and my Purdue ID card with which I can go to the Recreation Centre!!!

Metamorphosis

The cocoon has broken:
Drawn by an unknown urge
the moth readies its wings...
But the windchill stings!
And oh the cocoon's comfort!

Relieving Sleep

He stared at the ceiling,

as the fan went about its business

carving out circles,

One after the other,

with perfection and diligence.

...

The lump still in his throat,

his gaze deepened into the darkness.

Paralysed, his thoughts filled the room

with delirious silence.

...

"Never give all you got...",

his thoughts spoke from beside his bed,

"...in love or even in friendship!".

A few thoughts, scattered by the circling fan,

protested, "But!", and they dissipated.

Thoughts, snug under his pillow,

said, "Just forget it and move on..."

"But I did so much!", said some selfish thought,

grabbing onto his throat.

From the open window floated in a thought,

and slowly whispered,

"Expectation? Just kill it!"

"But...", said some helpless thought,

as he slowly slipped into sleep;

And troubling thoughts slowly dissolved

into the vortex of darkness, as the fan

carved out circles

with perfection and diligence.

Coins

Shimmering silver,
Jing-a-ling-a-ling,
Coins in my pocket,
my thigh they sting...

Feeling wretchedly rich
I walk the street,
Thinking candyfloss
would be such a treat...

Crafting large pink clouds
The large old man,
Stands with a grin
at the candyfloss-van...

. . .

My coins are gone,
in exchange that morn
for that fluffy pink thing
that can't jing-a-ling!

Jing-a-ling-a-ling,
Coins we fling,
Evening and dawn;
Would we value anything
If coins were gone?