I just wanted them to ask

I just wanted them to ask,

Not bother and bask,

I just wanted them to care,

That is only obvious and fare.

I asked not for a sonnet and a song,

Nor for pretty things to sing along.

All I asked for was love,

And none is what I got till now.

I asked not was cages of gold,

But the tight grip of your hold.

I want not the glitter of your smile,

But for you to be not apart a mile.

I asked not for divine embellishments,

But for wet trace of your rosy armaments.

The love is dead, that I know,

But life that is mine is being lost in snow.

In white and in black you tread,

In things you say are far important than the bread.

Care, do you really?

Love, hope you could see fairly.

Such is the loss that I dearly know,

That it is so much for me to let go.

Love me, care for me I beg,

It won’t cost you an arm or a leg.

I just wanted them to ask,

Not bother and bask,

I just wanted them to care,

That is only obvious and fare.

This is for D, who was pestering me lot to make a poem happen! So here it is , I fulfilled my promise :D

The Lost Childhood

Do you remember your juvenile days, the time when the whole world was full of wonder and possibilities? The time when the whole world was just perfect and everything was just a thought away? The truth is most of us cant, if I were a wee bit wrong and I do wish I was wrong, we could have seen a whole lot of people trotting along the streets smiling happy smiles. If I were wrong we could have seen unknown people playing with each other and there would have been no disgust or bias based on colour, race or faith. Every evil is the work of an adult, the child is not tainted, the child knows no distinction, and for a child all are one and the same. With age we learn to bias, discriminate and demarcate!

Let me tell you something that happened on my train journey yesterday, I was travelling on a train to home in a relatively full cabin. There was a young couple, an old man, a middle aged professional and then there was me. A rather weird mix of people that under no circumstances would strike up a conversation with each other but it so happened that in this particular journey we were meant to be more than just polite  in our conversations but friendly enough to play together. There was a girl, A sweet, cute angel with a flower the size of a lotus stuck to her hair bow and a smile that could melt the world away. She talked to us every one of us and before we knew we were cracking jokes playing at each other’s expense and mocking each other. What had happened for such a remarkable transformation to occur to a very strange group of people?

The truth is, the kid happened, her innocence transcended our hearts and heads, her innocent melted away any discrimination and disgust we would have carried, it annihilated whatever it was that prevented us from talking to each other. In her presence we were becoming children poking her, making faces, mimicking her stories and acclimating to her emotions. She made us able to see through life with clarity, without prejudices, an ability that we have lost in a very distant past. It’s a shame that we can’t live the life of a child always. Wouldn’t it be amazing had we been able to remain a child forever, an age of mind where your biggest sadness was not getting candy and your days always started with sunshine and ended in fairytales? An age when we were willing to believe in magic, fairytales, magic and fairies. An age characterized by an ability to trust and love unconditionally.

I believe we need to reclaim our childhood if we are to live life to our fullest. I believe when we lose all childishness and child-likeness in ourselves that’s when we really become old. It is possible and it is achievable, to be like a child, it is possible to keep an open mind and it is possible to love and trust unconditionally. We need to understand the child in us and keep it alive inside us. Life is too short to be not a child. Ask yourself if being in the presence of  a child is enough to make you childlike then would it be hard to be childlike all your life if you tried.




Photo Credits: Children Playing in Rain, Bangladesh© 1996-2012 National Geographic Society.

A Million Candles of Hope

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How marvelous and symbolic it would be if we could light a million candles on this eve, A million candles to celebrate hope. Of all the days that we could do it on, today it would make most sense. When over 4 million people alone suffer in silence under the evil reign of AIDS, we could instigate hope in their heart and light up their spirits. We would move them from the dark worlds they are now confined to and show them that there really are butterflies and gardens in this world and there is a world where the sun shines bright. I know I cannot do it alone, I would have done it if I could have done it alone, but still that doesn’t mean we can’t! If we all try and try hard maybe we could make the ‘Million Candles of Hope’ much more than a daydream.

Lighting up their lives

It is true that HIV is not all that taken lightly in the nation, the sadder truth is people are more afraid of the people than the disease. There is an urgent and imposing need to change the public perspective of this disease. It needs to be made sure that having HIV is not a crime and the victims need to be looked at with an eye of care rather than through an eye of discrimination. They are people much like me and you, they have a heart and they do have a feeling. To have a disease is no reason to tag them untouchables. We have made progress in instilling in many the truth of the matter, but the way is still long to the dreams that we share.

It will be but a matter of time before we have a cure and a real solution, a solution that is accessible to all. Then there will be no hypes that surround this disease, it will be like any other disease just like it should be. But till that day comes it is the duty bestowed upon us by virtue of the divine order to show men who are blinded by misconceptions the truth. The truth, touching a person or hugging someone is not going to get you HIV. A truth that everyone knows and many find convenient to forget and live with the lesser beliefs.

May be one day my dream of a million candles of hope will come true and though I have already lighted them in my mind and one in my room one day a million dancing lights will show the way. They will show the way to hope and better still will they stand to see the day when we shall all walk n hands, like we are meant to be, like brothers and sister, like one big family, one big caring family. One day a million candles will dance, A Million Candles of Hope.

A Million Candles like these for hope ?