As I drew you....

As I drew you...

I touched

your bushy hair,

as it gave way
and bounced back.

As I drew you...

I touched

your soft cheeks,

like chocolate

still warm with laughter.

As I drew you...

I touched

every fold in your face,

as you smiled

with abandon and simple joy.

As I drew you...

I touched

the sparkle in your eyes,

as they swelled

with a love for life itself.

As I drew you...

I touched

your crystal voice,

as it echoed

deep in my heart and soul.

As I drew you.....

I touched

your spirit unbound...

as it stoked me

and set me a free.

Man Vs. Man

Man kills Man
in war -
to make peace.
in anger -
to be happy.
in revenge -
to teach a lesson.
in fear -
to be brave.
in hatred -
to feel loved.
in jealousy -
to own.
in survival -
to exist.
in justice -
to become God.
But when will Man know
that every Man
who walks this earth
is Love?
Will he be Man enough
to learn
to just love?

Breaking free

For the first time perhaps in all these years, we as a family honoured our needs and ourselves and broke free from feelings of guilt and fear of breaking free from tradition....to celebrate ourselves and our precious moments together as a family.

It was Diwali - perhaps the King of all festivals in India - a time to be with family and friends;  a time to share and give; a time to ring in the new and shed the old....a festival of light, love and joy.

Although our families are quite open in many things, including our decision to homeschool our child, these traditions of celebrating festivals together have been held sacrosanct; so much so that we have grown up with the fear of being disapproved and feeling of guilt of not discharging one's "duty" even, if we did not celebrate it together with the usual fanfare. All along we have succumbed to these feelings of guilt and fear and our inabilities to handle ourselves when others said things that hurt us.....and in the bargain, we have not asserted ourselves nor honoured our needs. For the first time this time, we actually broke free from these chains that we bound ourselves with...and celebrated and honoured ourselves, without feeling guilt. And wow, was it liberating!

It all started with Raghav wanting to be away from the noise during Diwali. He dislikes the firecrackers and so do I! The noise and smells unnerve us both. So we decided to go away to a quiet place where we could do our own thing. Our families were not too happy with our decision, but we did not give them a choice this time to control our lives. The difference this time, however, was the intention......our intention was not to defy them and tradition.......our intention was to be with ourselves and do what each of us enjoyed and felt happy about.....and that made a huge difference to how we felt and how they reacted too! Yes there were those questions as to whether we wore new clothes (!!), comments as to how we could get away from firecrackers in India, whether we woke up early on Diwali and so on....it is really funny how people try to control you and your life when you live in India, but forget everything when you live away in some other country - when they know that they have no way of controlling from here!

So yes, we did set ourselves free and did things that we wanted to and enjoyed- we caught up on sleep, or a book, listened to music, had our own Diwali show of music and dance in our room (Raghav's idea!), made our own holiday monkey platters, built with Lego, spent time together laughing and playing or just being, enjoyed walks and drives through the beautiful landscape, wrote poetry, sketched, dabbled in photography, ate heartily or just simply lazed around! Yes - we did celebrate the spirit of Diwali in our own way - we broke free from old thoughts and fears once again....giving way to new thoughts of being with ourselves and each other....celebrating our own light and love.....giving ourselves gifts that we had not done before.


Once again, I discovered parts of myself that were long forgotten and had gathered dust....I remembered the photo that I had taken there of some tiny plants that grew from crevices between rocks......and realised the power and the beauty of truly breaking free.....the true self cannot be chained for long....it has to break free someday, because it just has to be!

My sketch of my husband

My sketch of Raghav

Munnar

Munnar

Tall trees of silver

Pierced the evening sky,

Green checkered hills

Slowly rolling by;

Fiery poinsettia

Kissed by the sun,

Butterflies in a tango

Beckoning beyond;

A waft of fresh, green leaves

Round every other bend,

Heady smell of tea leaves

Sublime and potent.

The cool air tingled,

Stirring hearts and souls,

Winding roads, hovering mist,

Beauty to behold!

(12th November 2012)

Rain and Love

Rain and Love

A cotton wool canopy

pregnant with rain;

shimmering silver waters

in a distant lake.

A thin veil of mist

hanging low;

the valley blushing -

a new bride aglow.

A silent rendezvous -

the earth and sky,

in a tight embrace;

no room to sigh!

A sudden cloudburst

drenches hills below

Giving birth anew -

to rain and love.

(11th November, 2012)

Letting go

Sometime ago, I listened to a spiritual master through a Youtube link that someone had sent me. A story from the Puranas (I think) that he shared touched me deeply and has been coming to me often and repeatedly, every time a fear of letting go grips me. Letting go has been the biggest challenge for me and it still is.......but it has become easier once I started doing it.

The story he shared was about a parrot and goes something like this:
There was a parrot who was caught by a man and trained....he carried it on a stick. But the parrot, although it was a bird by nature and could fly away anytime, could not......because it had forgotten how to fly! It was scared....and every time it felt fear, it gripped the stick more tightly instead of letting go.....the process of just letting go of the stick (here we could liken the stick to our ego, conditioning or anything else that we hold on to dearly) would have given the bird the freedom it so badly wanted. Why should it hold on to something so dearly when it knew deep inside that it could fly away wherever it wanted and whenever it wanted to? Why did it not let go?

Let go......let go......this is what echoes in my mind and heart these days......and like the parrot, I do find it hard to let go of some things.......but that is the ONLY way out for me! I know that....I want that....and I am trying to do that with everything in my life.....trying to break free and find myself.

Letting go.....

If only I could let go....

of love

of fear

of anger

of everything 

that I think is ME

I know I would find myself.....

the light

the shadow

the mirror

the abyss

and set my soul free......