Forty & Mushy on Valentine’s Day

 Valentine Day this year was truly a horror. Not only was the beloved not around, I was forced to sit through a dinner with people I normally run a mile from!  I also felt miserable because I couldn’t meet a friend, who is very sick with cancer, before he left for New York. Amends to my tragic situation were made at a later hours party with my beautifully insane friends though and I got back in the wee hours of dawn, all the time missing my guy…and thanking the Lord, that he is in my life.

So I wrote him a letter of thanks. Last year on Valentine’s day, I had written a letter to my guy, Adi, and published it on my blog. Here it is :<a href=”https://theaccidentalsufi.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/a-love-letter/&#8221; target=”_hplink”>https://theaccidentalsufi.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/a-love-letter/</a&gt;

It was not only my first ‘love’ letter ( we need to ignore the embarrassingly gushy teen missives to Amitabh Bachhan, Imran Khan, Michael Hutchence, Eddie Van Halen etc ), it was also the day I acknowledged to the world and most importantly to myself, the depth of my emotion for a man who is my best friend since two decades. Yes, I guess I wrote my first love letter when I am very much in my middle age! To cut a long story short, here we are both, after going through various loves and half loves, realizing the truth of Jonathan Safran Foer’s words “I love you also means I love you more than anyone loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that no one loves you, or has loved you, or will love you, and also, I love you in a way that I love no one else, and never have loved anyone else, and never will love anyone else.“

It is not that love takes a back seat on other days, but February 14 th , does have a charm of its own, despite the rant of the baiters and haters. What can be wrong about a day which celebrates love and romance ? C’mon, we belong to the land of Lord Krishna and Radha. And Vatsyana too! So there I was on Valentine’s day eve , middle-aged, mushy , most certainly  uh horny, thinking about my man, who unfortunately is in London.  Reports did reach me that the good man celebrated lovers’ day by falling into a vat of Scotch.

But let me tell you the reasons why I love him deeply, truly, madly….think I beat Eilzabeth Barret Browning “s ” How Do I Love Thee” 🙂

Dear Adi,
Thank you for……
1. For telling me that you love me more than rock n roll.

2. For never letting me win at chess and not feeling bad about it.

3. For waking me up on a cold December midnight in 2011, to ask me “If I say your voice is an amber waterfall in which I yearn to burn each day, if you eat my mouth like a mystical rose with powers of healing and damnation, If I confess that your body is the only civilization I long to experience… would it mean that we are close to knowing something about love?”  { Aberjhani, ”Visions of a Skylark Dressed in Black ‘ )

4. For holding me when I cry as I read.

5. For loving my family and my dogs.

6. For painting my toe nails.

7. For always answering ‘Baby, its sexy’ to my eternal ‘Does my arse look fat ?”.

8. For opening up and allowing me to curl up inside your rawness.

9. For kissing me on my forehead as I wept at Jim Morrison’s grave @Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris.

10. For telling me you will still want to caress my skin at 60.

11. For having the guts to admit that you hate my favorite author, Vladimir Nabokov.

12. For quoting Neruda to me.

13. For siding with my beloved sister against me all the time.

14. For, making love and pasta, sensationally and ready to do both 24 x7.

15. For not hating the great love of my life, the divine Jimmy Page.

16. For having separate book shelves and tooth brushes.

17. For agreeing that in the next stage of evolution men should get the periods and women need not squat to pee.

18. For believing that the scars on my heart and soul hinge with that of yours.

19. For knowing my mind as you know where the eleven moles on my body are.

20. For letting me be ‘ME’, never insisting on ‘US’.

Perhaps, next Valentine day, we shall seal our love with the epitome of all bonds and connections of the soul ? Ooh yes, we shall drink from a single coconut with two straws on the beach. That will be a first for me. I trust you haven’t had this epic togetherness moment as yet too.

I remain in love forever with the wild beauty of your heart and the beauty of your wild heart.

Happy Valentine’s Day! ( I hope you had a bloody awesome hangover too)

Yours as always,
Aparajita.

The Warrior In Your Life

 Ola! Do you have a warrior in your life ? I sure do 🙂 And this is what he tells me!

“To my sweet wild woman, I know why it hasn’t worked out with anyone else—you don’t need a man, but a goddamn warrior.

You are the strength of Turkish coffee at sunrise darlin’ and don’t try to pretend that you’re not.

You are one of the wild ones, and no matter how you tried to hide that fact, you can’t be anything other than what you are—and that’s okay. You are just as you are supposed to be, magnificently wild in all of your chaotic beauty.

I know you’ve had your heart broken and I know that you don’t understand why it always seems to never work out, but I’ve finally figured it out:

You don’t need a man, you need a goddamn warrior.

It doesn’t matter if this warrior drives a Jeep or a shiny sports car, and it won’t matter if he wears silk or cotton—it will not even matter if he works in a high-rise, or on the night shift.

What is going to matter is that when it comes to taking bets on your heart, he is going to be high stakes—all the way.

This warrior of yours will crave your strength, and your intensity. He’s going to look at you and not see something to tame, but something to just fuckin’ admire. This warrior of yours won’t be someone that you can manipulate or play with as you have in the past, so honey, don’t even try—and trust me, you’re going to love him even more because of it.

Because you aren’t just a woman, you’re a goddamn goddess.

Your fierceness is going to bring him to his knees every single time he looks into your gorgeous eyes, but the difference is, unlike the others, he isn’t going to be scared off. No, this time, you will have finally met your match—because a simple man for you just won’t do.

You need someone to match the fire in your eyes with his own. Not only that, my little wild thing, but this warrior of yours is going to want to encourage the flames instead of trying to douse them with his own insecurities.

Because for you, a warrior is the only man who will ever live in the wild with you.

He may not have to slay any dragons to earn your love, but he would still walk through fire if it meant seeing that amazing smile that you hold in reserve for only him.

This is the thing, free spirit, this warrior you seek….he’s seeking you too.

For he’s had failed relationships that have left him wondering if maybe he was meant to be alone for the rest of his journey—and you’re going to change all of that for him. You both have been travelling along on your separate journeys and have been doing an okay job at it, but that about to change too.

Because baby, when you and this warrior of yours meet and collide—it’s going to be a love set on fire.

 Don’t try to run this time—I know your heart has been broken before, and that you’re not used to things working out, but this time it’s different. Give yourself time to see that.

This warrior of yours needs to see that it’s possible for someone to see all of his wild, and still be there when he craves his freedom and ventures off into this world for a bit. You won’t always need to follow him, just as he won’t always follow you. Let yourself stay wild, even when all you want to do is curl up in that spot along his side and forget the rest of the world exists.

Let yourself still wander naked under the full moon, and drink moonshine with the stars. Let yourself feel the pull of the wind on your heart, and the sun toward a new journey. Because this warrior is going to love you because of your wild—and he’ll want you to keep it.

You’ll be in this together now, this amazing, crazy, chaotic, wonderfully heartbreaking life—because it takes a warrior to love a goddess. And it takes a goddess to show a warrior what real love is.

So pack up your insecurities and your ideas about picket fences, because that was never you anyway. You were born knowing that you were destined for more, and now is the time for you to see what all those dreams look like.

There is no stopping a love like this, so promise me you’ll hold out just a little bit longer.

Have a little bit of hope, and always give love just one more try, because I promise you my sweet wild woman—the love that you seek is seeking you as well.”

( Credits: Elephant Journalhttp://www.elephantjournal.com/2015/08/you-dont-need-a-man-you-need-a-goddamn-warrior/ )

Over & out , guys! Gotta Skype the warrior 😉

Fitoor ( Passion/Obsession)

Its a very cold, foggy day here in New Delhi today.Its also a national  holiday as India celebrates her 67th  Republic Day. And I am at home.Refueling and rejuvenating after what has been a severely hectic last fortnight.

My fascination with  letters and words,  as perhaps the most important communication  ( the other one is ,of course,  silence and unspoken words which strangely, have a deep connect) between two people has taken me to reading ‘The Diary Of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self Portrait” with an introduction by Carlos Fuentes and written by Frida Kahlo herself.

The fiercely talented Frida Kahlo is perhaps one of the most remarkable figures of contemporary culture. She was  was an extraordinary individual who liked to live in constant self-expression and by her own rules.Debilitated by polio at a young age and later in a serious traffic accident, which resulted in multiple body fractures and internal lesions inflicted by an iron rod that had pierced her stomach and uterus, she overcame great odds to emerge as a formidable artist of modern Mexico. Her art  synergizes elements from traditional Mexican art with a surrealist aesthetic. Known chiefly for her self -portraits, she came to be revered by feminists for depiction of the feminine form and  experience.

 Her love for the Mexican artist and her mentor Diego Rivera , that was equally reciprocated, was transcendental and incandescent. They wed when she was 22 and he 42 years old. Both had multiple affairs, the most notable of which for bisexual Kahlo were with French singer, dancer, and actress Josephine Baker and Russian Marxist theorist Leon Trotsky. The relationship however remained ferocious , intense and complicated and all-eclipsing.  Diego said “I did not know it then, but Frida had already become the most important fact in my life. And she would continue to be, up to the moment she died, twenty-seven years later”.

One marvels at the depth of her passion when she writes: “It’s not love, or tenderness, or affection, it’s life itself, my life, that I found what I saw it in your hands, in your month and in your breasts. I have the taste of almonds from your lips in my mouth. Our worlds have never gone outside. Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.”

or the knowledge that nothing or no one can come between them and  their enchanted love

 “There is cellular arrangement. There is movement. There is light. All centers are the same. Folly doesn’t exist. We are the same as we were and as we will be. Not counting on idiotic destiny”.

A true rebel , Kahlo, is a person I admire for a host of reasons and am influenced by. She  had famously proclaimed ‘I was born a bitch, I was born a painter’. I always smile at that. Here was a woman of such deep convictions, imagination and belief in herself/her art, that she continues to inspire relentlessly.

I called this blogpost ‘Fitoor’ which is an Urdu word that means passion or obsession in tribute to the magnificence  of Frida Kahlo : the way she lived her life , and the way both she and Diego loved each other. I shall confess that ‘Fitoor’ was a new word for me. I picked it from the television, that is on right now, and playing song promos from a new film by the same name. The music is good and  the hero is played by Aditya Roy Kapoor….which makes me miss hugely, hugely, hugely a certain Aditya in my life.I guess I will write him a letter which may possibly outshine Frida’s to Diego 🙂

But seriously guys, read the book by this extraordinary woman. She leaves you breathless in her zest and quest  to paint and create, to  live and love.You could complement it with Hayden Herrera’s definitive biography on her.

And I have got hooked on to this song:

 

 

 

The Most Beautiful Makeup Of A Woman Is Passion

She seems so cool, so focused, so quiet, yet her eyes remain fixed upon the horizon. You think you know all there is to know about her immediately upon meeting her, but everything you think you know is wrong. Passion flows through her like a river of blood……She only looked away for a moment, and the mask slipped, and you fell. All your tomorrows start here.

Photograph: Own, including the eyes

Words: Neil Gaiman, ” Fragile Things: Short  Fiction & Wonders”

Song: From the Bollywood movie ‘Jab tak hai jaan’ ( 2012)

Music: AR Rahman

Lyrics:The magic of Gulzar Sahab

 Here is the translation 🙂

Chali Re Chali Re Junoon Ko Liye
I started my trip, carrying a passion
Qatra Qatra Lamhon Ko Piye
Enjoying life moment by moment
Pinjre Se Udda  Dil Ka Shikra
Like a falcon,  my heart flew away from its cage
Khud Hi Se Maine Ishq Kiya Re
I started loving myself

Jiya Re Jiya Re, Jiya Jiya Re Jiya Re,
Jiya Jiya Re Jiya Re Jiya Oh Ho
Oh heart, live, live your wish 

Chotte Chotte Lamhon Ko Titli Jaise Pakdo Tho
If we catch little moments, like they are buterfies
Haathon Mein Rang Reh Jaata Hai Pankhon Se Jab Chodo Tho
Its colour will stay, even after we take off our wings
Waqt Chalta Hai
Time moves forward
Waqt Ka Magar Rang Utarta Hai, Aparajita
Colours of time fades away, Aparajita
Udte Udte Phir Ek Lamha Maine Pakad Liya Re
But I got hold of a flying moment

Jiya Re Jiya Re, Jiya Jiya Re Jiya Re,
Jiya Jiya Re Jiya Re Jiya Oh Ho
Oh heart, live, live your wish

Halke Halke Dardon Mein Muskurana Acha Lagta Hai
When I  feel little pain, I like to smile
Roshni  Jo Deta  Ho Tho Dil Jalaana Acha Lagta Hai
To get the light, setting the heart on fire ,seems fine
Ek Pal Sahi, Umar Bhar Isse Saath Rakhna, Aparajita
Even if it is a moment, keep it for life, Aparajita
Zindagi Se Phir Ek Vaada Maine Kar Liya Re
I made one promise to life

Jiya Re Jiya Re, Jiya Jiya Re Jiya Re,
Jiya Jiya Re Jiya Re Jiya Oh Ho
Oh heart, live, live your wish

Rang de Rangrejawa

The night is balmy here. Its way past midnight. I finished with an official dinner and now sitting by a poolside with my feet in the water.Its in  one of my  friend’s farmhouse where my beautiful people are partying. I can hear the sound of laughter,the clink of glasses and  JJ Cale crooning ,coming from inside.

I have tried calling up my guy in London many times. But he refuses to take my call. He is mad at me and possibly I deserve it ? I went incommunicado yesterday, switching off my mobile. He couldn’t reach me and was frantic. When I saw his texts, missed call alerts late this morning, I knew I was in trouble , oh boy!

Me: Ummm…before you yell..

He: Baby, where the f**** were you??

Me: You needn’t be so nasty..erm..stop being worried! I can take care of myself..umm

He: *hateful, icy cold voice* Well?

Me: Sorry * God, I never like saying sorry*

He: *softens…he knows I hate saying sorry*. Brucie died..you were inconsolable.And it was also the day  Jim Morrison died..you are so damn nuts about this day..I just got worried baby..

Me:* smiles…aah yes..the  Morrison connect is there only with him* Cosmic mate, do you how know much I love you ?

He: Never again ?

Me:* mutinous* Nobody tells me what to do.

He: *severs the line*

It is strange but I keep remembering his hands now. They are so  strong , so beautiful…range de, rang de rangrejawa…that’s what I want to tell him.

And yes, this is for him. Photos of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe. He will understand…don’t you Adi ? Us, non ? Since we were just kids…

“What will happen to us?” I asked. “There will always be us,” he answered.” ( Patti Smith, ‘Just Kids’)

What Is To Give Light Must Endure Burning

” unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don’t do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don’t do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way
and there never was”.( Charles Bukowski)

Addicted To Love

“When does real love begin?

At first it was a fire, eclipses, short circuits, lightning and fireworks; the incense, hammocks, drugs, wines, perfumes; then spasm and honey, fever, fatigue, warmth, currents of liquid fire, feast and orgies; then dreams, visions, candlelight, flowers, pictures; then images out of the past, fairy tales, stories, then pages out of a book, a poem; then laughter, then chastity.

At what moment does the knife wound sink so deep that the flesh begins to weep with love?

At first power, power, then the wound, and love, and love and fears, and the loss of the self, and the gift, and slavery. At first I ruled, loved less; then more, then slavery. Slavery to his image, his odor, the craving, the hunger, the thirst, the obsession.”

(Anaïs Nin, Fire :From a Journal Of Love-The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin )

# The song ‘Addicted to Love’ was performed by Robert Palmer. But I am posting a truly kick-ass version by a truly kick-ass lady 🙂 Yeah, Tina Turner.

Brief Encounters With Che Guevara

Sometime back, I came across this book, ‘Brief Encounters With Che Guevara’ by Ben Fountain, in my favorite bookshop i.e Midland Bookshop (Shop No-20, Aurbindo Place Market, Hauz Khas, Near Green Park Church, Delhi). Years and years of buying books from him has made the owner a friend of mine too. In fact, a month back or so, he gifted me with “The Search Warrant’ by Patrick Modianao ( who I hadn’t read till this book) stating with a smile that ‘Aap junooni ho” .( Translation: You have a madness for books & reading).

Well, I hadn’t really heard of Ben Fountain. Its the book’s title which caught my attention. Anything about Che Guevara, who is a hero of mine, naturally grabs my interest. I shall give you a peep into my world of Che, but before that let me tell you about this truly brilliant book and exceptional writer of its short stories. I have a great respect for short stories’ writers possibly because I guess its a gift to be able construct a setting, character, plot with such few words! A childhood literary diet rich with Hemingway, O.Henry, Katherine Mansfield,Oscar Wilde etc reinforces this respect.When Alice Munro won the Nobel Lit in 2013 for her contribution to short-story telling, I whooped, danced around and kissed my copy of her magnificent ”Runaway” in tribute and celebration 🙂

Back to the current book.’The Guardian’ marvelously  states the “use foreign settings as more than just fragrant backgrounds””,by Ben Fountain, reminiscent of ”  Graham Greene, whose “quiet American”, Alden Pyle, stalks these pages in various guises”. We are taken by the author several times to Haiti,to Myanmmar, to Sierra Leone, to Colombia. To states  which have been witness to social and political upheaval. To societies which grapple with transformation and change.  To the people who walk in these states and societies similarly as they walk down the alleys of their human souls. The stories are told from what many call an ‘American’ perspective.But I disagree.They have been told from a very human perspective.

There are eight short stories, out of which three really hit me in the guts. The first, ” Near-Extinct Birds of the Central Cordillera”, an ornithologist , John Blair, is held hostage in the Colombian rain forest by rebels.His interaction with them reveals that his captors’ commitment to the cause is eclipsed voluntarily by their contrary nearness and bargains with the ‘capitalistic’ big business!  The rebels strike a deal for the lumbering rights to the mountain.The logging would mean the extinction of several species  that Blair has discovered while in captivity. When he protests, Commandante Alberto, the rebel leader, forces Blair  to return home with the visiting American delegation. Blair refuses to leave but the leader insists, saying otherwise Blair would be shot. On the way out of the jungle, the businessmen ask how it feels to finally be going home?

“They were rising, rising, they might never stop – Blair closed his eyes and let his head roll back, surrendering to the awful weightlessness. Like dying, he wanted to tell them, like death, and how grieved and utterly lost you’d feel as everything precious faded out“.  I couldn’t help but liken it to the dying and the end of idealism. Fountain writes “thirty years of low-intensity warfare had given the rebels a heightened sense of the absurd”. I guess that’s what ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity’ are thought of as today.Absurd!

 The second story is “The Lion’s Mouth,”  in which a disillusioned aid worker, Jill, makes a Faustian bargain to become a blood diamond smuggler for the ‘greater good’. Set in Sierra Leone, the story delves into the complexities of aid in damaged societies.The moral ambiguity ,told relentlessly and un-flinchingly, troubled me a lot. I questioned myself about the way I would have behaved in such a situation.I confess to being surprised with the answers.Maybe, you would be too ?

The third story ” Brief Encounters With Che Guevara” has five sub-stories.All of them talk about a writer’s interactions with people who were  in some way connected with Che ( a reference point/touchstone). My favorites from these five are ( a) ” Death In Bolivia’, (b) ‘Comrades-In Arms’ and (c) ‘The Consoling Voice’.

I would highly recommend this book. It has a lot of dark humor and  a very  grandiose, baroque sort of flamboyance in its detailing.The author laments the  hypocrisy, questions the choices to resignedly accept the powerlessness to set things right. An idealist, most certainly Ben Fountain is.But doesn’t look at the world around him through rose-tinted glasses.Which is brave.Very, very brave.

Well, okay, guys, do read the novel, if you are so inclined 🙂 And, yeah, some pics to show my Che-ness 🙂

          

                        

                         

(  Books and spiral bound articles/newspaper clippings etc about Che. One of the spiral bound books is ‘The Motorcycle Diaries”, photocopy of my original copy. I gave my copy to my guy some years back to introduce him to Che. I never part with my books.So he understood the significance. Of Che & my gifting it to him 🙂

I was once stopped by security at the New Delhi domestic aiport. I was dressed in my Che T- shirt and torn jeans with an embroidered patch that said ‘Vive La Revolution”.I was also carrying my Che laptop bag very proudly, having just bought it then. The young  security officer couldn’t really answer my polite question as to why he had singled me out for a random security check. Instead, he looked very warily at all my Che gear. At the iconic image of Che immortalized by Alberto Korda 🙂 I thought I should tell him about Che and what he  stands for, what he fought for.But I didn’t.

To me , Che Guevara  represents three things which I value. Freedom, courage and the absolute inability to put up with any kind of injustice. When I fight for children or old aged people or animals or anyone that is defenseless, I am following Che’s ideals.

Time to call it a day, guys!

Every Grey Cloud Has A Silver Lining

“In my arms is a woman who has given me a Skywatcher’s Cloud Chart, a woman who knows all my secrets, a woman who knows just how messed up my mind is, how many pills I’m on, and yet she allows me to hold her anyway. There’s something honest about all this, and I cannot imagine any other woman lying in the middle of a frozen soccer field with me – in the middle of a snowstorm even – impossibly hoping to see a single cloud break free of a nimbostratus.”- ( Matthew Quick, ”The Silver Linings Playbook”)

#  The accidental sufi reads this as : ‘In my arms is a man…….’

#The accidental sufi is listening to this :http://youtu.be/KNZH-emehxA

# The accidental sufi just texted this to her beloved half-breed: “The only way to beat my crazy was by doing something even crazier. Thank you. I love you. I knew it from the moment I saw you. I’m sorry it took me so longto catch up.”

# The accidental sufi smiles at the reply text: ” I need you so f****** bad”.

 

Ummm….sealed with a wink 😀 Always! Classier than a kiss says the accidental sufi 😀

Reply wink 😀 Yeah, says her half -breed 😀 Tana tan tan tan tara, chalti kya  tu nau se gyara ?

Sochna bhi kiya, jo bhi hoga dekha jayega 🙂

Ps: Do read the book ‘The Silver Linings Playbook’ by Mathhew Quick and watch the movie too! Its very rare that both  are great.

Love: Yeh Kaisi Dilkashi

Last night, I was answering a question of one of the readers of this blog.And I used the words of Mir Taqi Mir. He is a very favorite poet of mine.An 18th century Urdu poet, he is credited to be singularly crucial to the development of the language. Mir Taqi Mir ( 1723-1810) is known as ‘Khuda-e-Sukhan’ or God of poetry.

There is one ‘gazhal’ of his which I love.Each time I heard,its beauty and magnificence was enhanced. I always wondered whether one could feel such love and passion. More specifically, whether I can ever feel so. There is an existential angst depicted in it which so characterizes romantic Urdu poetry.That is to say whether one can exist without his/her beloved? Much like what Jim Morrison ‘s ‘cosmic mate’ concept which means that you remain un-fulfilled and empty without your beloved who can only complete you;and a life without that person is one of anguish.

Rumi told me “Your task is not to seek for love but merely to seek & find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it”. And I realized that it was time to let go of these barriers and surrender to love, which I have till date been forbidding myself to, despite knowing/understanding/glorifying in that person who can only complete/completes me.Why was this love forbidden? Many reasons, I guess, but most importantly because I had not let go of the ‘I’. I have let it go now….and I am reminded of Firaaq Gorakhpuri’s words( in a different context, though, about forbidden love) ” Zara visaal ke baad aaina to dekh ai dost/tere jamaal ki dosheezagi nazar aayi”( Translated: Look in the mirror after union,friend/How your beauty has acquired a virgin innocence).

When I listen to the words of Mir now, I see the face of the person who has been my beloved since I was sixteen years old and to whom I can say it 🙂 .He has been with me in many forms.But he was always/is/will be with me because, he and  I , know now that both of us cannot exist without each other.Like Heathcliff and Catherine.

These are the words of this beautiful gazhal:

‘Faqiraana aaye the, saada kar chale, miyaan khush raho hum dua kar chale”

(Entering like a beggar, unfulfilled I went, said a prayer for you, now be content)

“Jo tujh bin na jeene ko kahte the hum,So is ahd ko ab vafaa kar chale”

(A promise I made not to stay alive without you,Now I leave  the world to honor it, adieu)

“Koi na-ummeedaana karte nigaah, so tum hum se moonh bhi chupa kar chale’

(Any sign from you would confirm hopelessness, so you left sans a good-bye, hiding your face)

‘Bahut arzoo thi gali ki teri,so yaan se lahu mein naha kar chale”

(To reach your streets, was all that mattered,I arrived, but left defeated, blood-spattered)

‘dikhaai diye yoon ke bekhud kiya, hamein aap se bhi juda kar chale”

(It was portrayed as a selfless quotidian act, but it tore me asunder from you infact)

“jabeen sajda karte hi karte gayi, haq-e-bandagi hum ada kar chale’

(My head prostrated before you on the ground, the essence of servitude, my love had found)

‘Parastish ki yaan tak ke ai but tujhe, nazar mein sabon ki Khuda kar chale’

(So devout, O idol, was my faith in you,that in other eyes, I made you a God too)

‘Kahen kya jo pooche koi humse Mir,jahaan mein tum aaye the, kya kar chale?”

(How should I respond,they ask meas I leave, in this stay on earth,Mir, what did you achieve?”

The ‘gazhal’ was sung very beautifully by Lata Mangeshkar in the 1982 movie ”Bazaar’. A movie of equally great beauty and depth.One got to see some of the finest acting in it. Listen to Lata ji’s rendition here:http://youtu.be/7KgyhgnnRRE

To the man who who matches my madness to show me  infinity and beyond,who smells like sea wind and has oceanic eyes of blue-green,this one is for you Adi…I open up my mind  to you ….that which I had guarded so fiercely from everyone till now…I open up myself to you….knowing that I have truly come home now 🙂 http://youtu.be/I7xqX51zqoM