Poem: For Kohl's Sake

For the painter,

who created this abstract so aesthetic;

For the musician,

who composed this song so sympathetic;

For the poet,

who penned down this poem so rhyming;

For the illusionist,

whose incantations made it so mesmerizing;

And for the kohl’s sake,

I’ll never let your tears congregate,

into a salty lake. 

For your Eyes,

so affable and yet so enigmatic;

For your Voice,

that I listen to everyday, so acoustic;

For your shoulders,

which divide my burden, so agile;

For your lips,

which smile to make me smile;

And for the Kohl’s sake,

I’ll not let that smile fade,

to silly reasons of heart-break.

For the blues,

that I played in your dearth;

For the disparagement,

which brought me down to earth; 

For the malefaction,

which pricked to make me anaesthetic;

For the lies,

to treasure our bond was so plastic;

And for the kohl’s sake,

I forgive you for being equivocal 

and pretending like a fake. 

For the fairy tales,

that we imagined, so melodramatic;

For the nocturnal talks,

when we shared our notions, so telepathic;

For the embracing hugs,

when you were overjoyed, so euphoric; 

For the hilarious gags,

when we laughed out loud, so sarcastic;

And for the kohl’s sake,

I’d never want to share you

even for the biggest piece of cake,

never for the kohl’s sake. 

Poem: A disciple's tribute

Hello Reader,

This poem is dedicated to all the teachers of my life.

I was like clay,

unshaped and useless.

On my first birthday,

I cursed the lord,

"Why no God gifts for me, Oh! God."

and He replied,

"Parents are your first teachers

and teachers are your second parents".

What else do you want?

And soon I realized what he meant

when in shaping me,

all their time my teachers spent.

In making a better Me

and a world free of rust,

teachers inhaled less of oxygen

and more of chalk dust.

Even if I tried to fail

they kissed my palms

but with a wooden scale.

And loaded me with lots of love

in form of assignments and surprise test

but only to bring out my very best.

Also in the most boring lectures

I learnt so many lessons

not the subject but a lot about patience.

From ABCD the alphabets

to ABCD the parameters

they taught me all.

They held my hand throughout

and never let me fall.

I was like clay

unshaped and useless

and they molded me into a creature

For your hard work and time

Thank you, Teacher.

-Ashish

Poem: We are hungry

Hello Reader

1. Politician says...

We are not hungry,

but who denies the desserts?

Vote for our party,

you'll love our efforts.

We are all like a family,

helping our deceased, aged mother.

All we need is your blessings,

Big Brother,

pocket-full of currency

and a black leather blazer.

Forget our records,

why to dig the graves of the past?

We fell in the politics of blame game,

all the allegations were simply lame.

We follow the Mahatma,

we believe in patience.

We'll soon be better

than all other nations.

There will be smile, in every next door,

there will be no distress.

just be  with us till the end,

your work is in progress.

2. Common Man says...

We are hungry

but too lazy to cook.

For that we voted some faithful workers,

they all turned out to be crook.

We are resilient and helpless,

just like our deceased, aged mother.

You decide our fate,

Godfather,

we are like those amphibians,

we can sustain in any habitat,

First it were the outsiders,

Now it is you, leaders of our own race,

left us in a mode called disable.

All we can do

is discuss the nation's doom, at the tea table.

We wait for a hero to bring the change,

as doing such a task

is out of our range.

We follow the Mahatma,

we see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.

We don't want our hands to be dirty,

or bring any kind of stain on our clean and white veil.

3. Activist says...

And we are hungry 

but for a national cause.

In a hope to change things

though they don’t care about our loss.

We’ll keep fighting

for our deceased, aged mother.

Instead of enduring your cruelty,

we’d die, rather.

We follow the Mahatma, 

we believe in truth.

If you greedy gluttons disagree, 

we’d enlighten the youth.

Every time we try; 

you make sure, we fail.

And before we could scratch, 

you don’t let us grow our nail.

Enough is enough.

It’s time to revisit the August revolution,

nobody can stop our flight to take off.

It is the only path, only solution,

to never let the lantern turn off.

-Ashish

You might also like: Poem: A walk through the future | Rags and Riches

Parvaaz: Takes you on a high

Two years ago, they performed at our college's fest 'Anaadyanta' as one of the participants in the event called 'battle of bands'. They won and it was not a surprise as all the rest of the bands sounded similar. But, Parvaaz stood out ‘coz of their unique compositions and genre. The psychedelic Sufi Rock Band performed once again at our college fest two years later when they were full-fledged artists. And today, they are launching their first Album ‘Behosh’.

It really feels good to witness and follow such artists from their very beginning. And as the lead-singer, Khalid Ahmed said at our college gig, “we started our journey from this college, on this stage.”

In their first performance at our college, two years back, they had performed two of their songs ‘Azaadi’ and ‘Balma’. The songs had a viral effect on the audience. Later, after the event the song somehow got circulated via phone to phone. God bless the person who recorded it. People were humming the songs as if they have been hearing those songs from ages.

I was lucky to meet them this year at our college gig and I was also given the job to take them to the lunch before their highly-awaited performance and to have such people in my facebook friend list.

And the same night, finally, we once again, witnessed their gig. As soon as they finished their sound check, nobody could stop themselves from running towards the stage and banging their heads as we went high on their celestial music. Apart from the accoustic guitar (Khalid Ahmed), electric guitar (Kashif Iqbal), Bass guitar (Fidel D’souza) and Drums (Sachin Banandur), they also used some very rarely used instruments whose name even I don’t know.

But, all I know is that those instruments were very classy and gave a very extraordinary feel to their music and also reflected the unique touch which is required. The lyrics were as penetrating as the music. It grows on you slowly and even before you notice, you would be singing along with the band. That’s the magic they create.

So, this is the one band which you should certainly not miss. I am very much looking forward for ‘Behosh’ and I am sure this band, in next two years, more or less, will be one of the leading Indian Rock bands. Just like Swarathma, Indian Ocean, Parikrama, this band has its own uniqueness which will take their flight into the cloud number nine and beyond.  

Your television is crying

Hello Reader

Are all the good writers dead? Are all the good actors dead?
What has happened to the realistic shows such as Malgudi days, Office-Office etc?
Switch on your TV and tune into any Indian channel on a weekday, the first thing you observe is a heavily loaded (with makeup, flashy jewelry and weight) women excreting waterfalls from their eyes and drum beats with temple-bells buzzing in the background. As if God is being cruel to them lifelong and as if they have been seeing only downs and facing hurdles all their life. Oh! please, shut that plastic emotions up. I seriously want to belt the writers of these daily operas. Broadcasting at national level, do they have no sense of writing a real story? If there were a law, these writers would have been given death sentence for writing those senseless, baseless dramas garnished with overacting by the people who try to act. Just to bring a new twist and spice in the tale, the complete theme of the story gets converted into a melodrama even though the show's actual purpose was to meet social issues. If there are 10 shows being broadcast ed on an entertainment channel, 8 of them have the same taste of family drama...containing a huge family living a larger-than-life life. There would be family living a lavish life in a palace or if they have to tell the story of a middle class people, the family would be living in a Mumbai based chaal or slum.

Oh! naive art directors, have you never lived a normal life?  Due to lack of creativity, even the titles are lifted from the old retro songs. And why do they keep on crying? IS there nothing that makes them happy.. or do they cry because of low pay they get. There is too much of negativity in these shows. Why can't they showcase a story that brings smile? And why isn't there no end to a TV show? it keeps on going...decades of crying. Uh! it does make a huge impact on the viewer's life too. A huge percentage of population watches these shows, not because they like it.
Now coming to music channels, MTv and Vtv used to be music channels some years ago. Following the trend, even these so-called youthful channels have been running these dramas.  The real music is lost.
Reality in these shows is hard to find. Reality in reality shows is even hard to find. To attract audience by creating unwanted drama, the real life stories of people are narrated in a filmy way... to gain cheap T.R.P.
Not only reality shows does that but even news channels. God save those news channels who create stupidest news you can ever imagine and actually dare to broadcast it. The range of their creativity is high though...they have been telling us the news of Aliens kidnapping farmer's cows. So it includes kidnapping, aliens, cow and drama. Now do I put that channel under news, entertainment, science, spiritual or just grabage.
Oh yes, how can i forget the spiritual channels. They are the ones who have been making fool out of television watchers. Recently, fortunately, the frauds such has Nirmal Baba have been unveiled who have been talking shit all day in these channels. Now here's the question Who the hell allows them and gives them space to do that on a national TV? It's like promoting con-men in open. Making fool out of people, telling lies publicly is stealing one's right to know the truth. 

I don't know about others but I am certainly fed up of these TV shows. Apart from some, rest all are simply lame.
We really require a lot better and creative story writers.
Indian television should grow up. Really, ASAP!