Songs of the Soul-II

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II

The track of molten joy

Is etched upon my cheeks,

I fill them up.

The wind from the sea of dreams

Is hidden in my chest,

I blew them out.

The drum of eternal life

Plays beneath my ribs,

I unleash it.

Still, the miracle of your nearness

In the soil of my ecstasies,

Bears no words. 

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Songs of the Soul

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A bridge stands for a purpose between every ‘you and me’ in the world. There would be words filling the bridge, traversing from the depth of a beating heart to the delicate and receptive cup of a pure soul. I would rather say I am wordless when talking about this phenomenon, which we usually identify as “words spoken between two”.  There are terms like communication, talk, conversation, dialogue, and even monologue in order to explain this bridge. Whatever name we give it, this is the bridge that brings us together and makes us stay close with each other. But sometimes, we don’t find words to express what we feel, towards ourselves, the other, or God. These are the moments of vacant buoyancy. We float like a weightless bubble on the surface of the river of life and someone comes along in the form of a touch, a gust of breeze or like of a storm and takes us to a destination, according to who they are. We just float towards an unknown destination.

We cry, there would be no other way to express what we feel in those times; wordless times. Tears shed for someone else, could suggest a couple of things: one—that it is enough of the person in your life; two—that you could not have enough of him. When you cry in front of your God, you do it for the latter. You sing with your soul, but no words come out and you wonder why was I so naïve to think God is listening when there were no words spoken and no meaning made.

When we shed a drop of tear in love, we do it for both the reasons. We hate who we love, for being so helpless and struck with awe at the magnificence of love, standing at the other end of the bridge. We love and still we cannot tell how much. We know it, but we do not know it at all.

Here are a new series of i-poems.

They are my attempt to find out what lies in the bridge between you and me, when there are no words to serve as messengers across it.

I call them: “Songs of the soul”

Here is the first installment. Hope you would like it and your soul will rejoice in it, like you did when I wrote my other poems, too. O Muse, here I am, singing for you…

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Songs of the Soul

I

The clock pushed from the cliff of time,

Has a tick to cry back.

A joy stricken bird invades the sky,

With open wings and a song from its heart.

When your words tap the strings of my soul, though,

The sorry me; stand wordless!

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Spam Luck

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Our client is looking for 100 English writers; we could pay up to $10,000/month with bonuses for writers who deliver good content on a regular basis. No experience required. Payment via Paypal, Check, or a Bank Wire.

Mithun Vadakkedathu signed out. But he did not forget to mark the mail he just read as spam. He had been signing up in job sites and this has become his day job.

The previous week he had gone to the Parassinikadavu temple and paid for Vellaattam, the worship dance for pleasing Muthappan, the deity of Parassinikkadavu temple, the ancient God of the commoner.

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He groped in his wallet which had holes inside and threads were coming off from its bottom. The outer layer of rexine was removed from many places by time.

Mithun took out three pieces of paper, three tickets: one red, one grey, one pale white in colour. He murmured; “O God, all my prayers, all the Vellaattam I paid for are gone without purpose. I must have done something terrible that I still do not know myself. Perhaps the beggar I didn’t help, or the old man I hadn’t offered a seat in the bus.”

He was sure, gods were deaf towards him and that his future loomed in the doorstep of a bankrupt hell. But he also had heard of the heart of Muthappan, kind, and quick to rescue in the tears of His followers.

“I have lost my job months ago! My future seems to be in dark. O God, help me!” He prayed.

He worked as a teacher until two months ago in an English medium school in Kannur city. He taught English Literature. The course demanded the course to be taught from Chaucer to Shakespeare. Mithun found it difficult to keep the attention of the students.

When he recited, “Whan that aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of march hath perced to the roote,” one of the students had asked, “Excuse me sir, why should we study this?”

Students in Twelfth standard are always trouble, he had consoled himself. However, he was not content with the progress he made with his teaching. So he decided to try something else. He gave the students books to read—from out of the syllabus; books that he had thought could lure the kids into reading—by Dean Koontz, Stephen King, Sidney Sheldon, William Blake, Rumi, Whitman.

The experiment had an impressive result; the kids started reading books and wanted more. Some of them even started writing their own stories and poems. The next time he told them about Ian McEwan and Don DeLillo and next T. S Eliot, then Charles Dickens and then Shakespeare. He was entering into the vast body of literary history from the front door. That was not the tradition; it had to be approached from past, from Chaucer, from back door that usually scared people away or caused them take the information in as if it’s science of geography.

In the very next Department staff meeting, Mithun stood as a convict. The Principal asked him to submit a show-cause notice for deviating in such a gross manner from the prescribed pattern of syllabus. His colleagues shot him that expressionless, pitiful look that one can usually observe in the eyes of the dead fish in the fish market.   

As night ascended and the whole family slept, Mithun slowly switched on his computer, this time he did not open his mail. Instead, he checked all his favorite porn sites one by one. When sleep knocked on his eyes, he was all ready to fall deeply into its bosom and forget the dreary day.

As sleep overpowered him he had a dream. He was not sure at first whether it was a dream at all, because it started with an echo. A droning sound hat twisted the membranes of his thoughts, leaving them confused and weary. It was like a wind howling in a distance. Then it started coming close, the voice.  

Then, he heard Bells. It sounded more like small clutter of bells intermittently, as if attached with someone’s feet. It was like someone with an anklet, walking. He was sure he did; even though in sleep, he could clearly make out the sound. This made him think if it was sleep at all.

Then he opened his eyes. There was something strange, he did not open his eyes because he wanted to, but as if someone had asked him to, it was much like an order. He heard it, like a trail of audible silence and opened his eyes.

His eyes were opened to a gleam that was light reflected from the arrows loaded in a quiver. There was a man in front of him, with a turban made of flowers and silver, his eyes covered with a pair of silver shields, and body covered in strange designs and in magnificent colours.

The man was much closer in looks to the deity he worshipped during Vellaattam.

That was Muthappan.

“O, Muthappa!” Mithun cried and joining both his hands fell to the ground in front of the god. “Forgive me my mistakes and bless me,” he said.   

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“Bless you?” Muthappan asked with a curious tone in his voice, “Why should I bless you any more? I already bestowed upon you what you needed.”

Mithun stood up startled. “What do you mean O, Muthappa?!” he asked hesitantly.

“Oh, yes, how can you! You are so obsessed with misery,” Muthappan said.  

“Me? Obsessed! I do not understand,” Mithun said baffled.

“The email you marked spam and deleted this morning was your key to success. You could have become rich. That was my blessing to you, but you ignored it thinking that such an offer is beyond normal,” Muthappan said. Mithun was saying something, but his words vanished midway as he saw no one around.

Muthappan heeds all. He never resides at one place for long, Mithun thought.

“It’s just a dream,” he said to himself.   

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Wrong Time Mending

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An old storyteller lived in the mountains in the eastern part of Malabar. His wife often complained about the lack of any human companion to their solitary dwelling. There was always a reason the storyteller told his woman; “I learn my stories from this solitude, my dear Chakky.”

Silence was the only option the old woman had, since she knew that the family survived on the money the folks in the market place offered for the tales the old man told. And it was into this region of sulking silence the young aspiring storyteller came, one day. He was there to learn the art from the master. The old woman celebrated his presence by cooking various delicacies for the student and the master.

One day the student went to town and came back with a cloud of disappointment over his face. His eyes were red as if he had cried a lot of sorry hours out. “Now, would you ever ask him what happened?” the old woman forced the storyteller. The heart of the woman perhaps had taken the young man with a maternal affection.

Understanding her desperate need, the master asked the young man what happened. The young man seemed agitated at this question. He said, “I don’t think I need to tell you this, but I understand your concerns. I was telling a story in the town and suddenly without me foreseeing; I deviated from my tale, and started telling something else. I was aware of this, but it happened as if I had a different person inside me and he was freeing himself from my control.”

The master thought for a moment. Then he smiled and said, “I can see why you are upset. Let me tell you, you should not worry about what happened. That was a sign; a sign that told you how much close you are to the universe of stories. It has started flowing through you, like a brook. Sometimes we have to submit ourselves to the mouth of the universe; it speaks through us. Let it be.”

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The young student looked at the old man. He also saw the wife of the master standing beside him curious. “I did not ask you for any advice this time, did I?” he asked with a thunder of frustration on his face. “Master, don’t take me wrong; what do you say of the disgrace I had in the market and the bad impression I registered today in the hearts of those people?”

Once delivered this question, he walked away from the master and the old woman, into the plains and disappeared. The wife of the storyteller slowly approached her husband, “I never thought there would it would turn out to be acidic.”

“That is all right, Chakky. Understand that he is deeply disturbed,” the master said. “Think of yourself in his terms. You will understand.”

Her arms held the old man’s right arm as if supporting herself in the hurt the mother in her had just endured. The father figure being disgraced, the mother felt a deep burning pain in her mind. “But you told him the best things I ever heard in my life,” she said.

The master said with a smile, “Yes, I did, but at the wrong time.”

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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

“Judge us not equally, Abraham. We may all deserve hell, but some of us deserve it sooner than others.” 
― Seth Grahame-Smith, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Coming soon:

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Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

Book Review

They are the undead. Their energy levels parallel nothing a human can match. They are on prowl to keep their thirst satiated. There should be a hunter to hunt them all down. Here is one in history—Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.

THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR reviews the latest book sensation by Seth Grahame-Smith.

Make sure you do not miss a drop of it. 

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The Teller of Bad Tales

“There is a crack in everything that is how the light gets in”—Leonard Cohen.

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When a story is born angels smile. They rejoice with God, for a story is the writer’s resurrection under the shade of words, calling for spaces so close to the signs with endless meaning, the young writer thought. He was sitting alone nearby a river, which was deep enough to swallow even a huge mountain. He was about to make the most crucial decision in his life; suicide.

The sun shone brightly in the sky. Tears dried up on his cheek. He stood up and moved, closer to the river. His feet crushed the gravel on the edge of the cliff, where he stood listening to the thunder of the roaring waves that leapt up to devour the shadows the mountains around caste. Then he heard a voice—human voice.

It could be an animal too. He had decided how the end of his life must look like. Therefore whatever came across was nothing worth bothering about. It was a sin, according to his tradition. He knew he was making the angels sad, and God unhappy. But he knew this well, too that no angels smiled at him yet, and God hadn’t yet had shown signs of joy over his existence; he could not become a successful writer. The young man repeated to himself: “I am right, this time.”

He did not see any animal. He waited with a pounding heart. Then he heard the voice again. Now it was a whisper…. “Once upon a time..,” it said.

The voice grew bolder. He recognized the voice. It was the voice of the storyteller who lived in the mountains. No one in his place was much interested in his stories, but still every one found him at the market place each day, where people gathered in the early evening. He told them his stories there. This was almost a ritual, and would go on till late night. The young writer too, never went to listen to his stories.

Who in his sane mind would?

Most of the days it were the thieves and lonely beggars who would listen to him late after the sun set.

The young writer wondered how the voice of the storyteller could get to so far a distance, to the river shore. The mountain was kilometers away from the river. It might be the wind that brought his booming voice covered in its cloak. Insane wind, thought the young man.

Suddenly he had a new idea; even though everything was decided, why not take a turn in the path and come back after giving a visit to the old man, the unpopular storyteller, in the mountain.

He took his bicycle and drove towards the mountains. After reaching the foot of the mountain he had to abandon his vehicle, for it could not take him over the hazardous twists and turns of the mountain path.

It did not take him long to reach the house, situated on the slope of the mountain. An old man was sitting in the verandah frowning over a white paper, writing something. The storyteller looked up from his work as he heard the footsteps of someone approaching.

The young man halted politely nearby. “Who are you?” The old man asked.

“I am a failure.” The young man replied, irritated upon his own decision now to visit the old storyteller.

“Ah, my fate hasn’t given up yet! All failures first visit my door step, before entering the world.” The storyteller looked frustrated, too. “Why are you disturbing me? Can’t you see I am at work?”

“What are you working at?” The youngster asked, curious.

“Why, I am working at my new story.” The old man retorted without looking at the youngster anymore.

The young writer felt a huge lighting bolt striking his heart. Questions welled up in his mind. Will it be rude, if he asked them? After all, the old man was a harmless person, who always tried to entertain the people of the town. He never heard the old man harbouring any ill will against any of the town’s people.  That doesn’t matter anymore, for everything was decided, absolutely, undeniably. He was going to die and even if he hurt the old man, after his death he would not remember the guilt.

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“Do you know something old man; nobody in the town likes your stories. Then why are you working on new ones? Why don’t you stop betraying yourself?” The young writer blurted out.

As the storyteller looked at him again in his eyes, the young man noticed a drop of tear. The youngster suddenly regretted his question.

When the old man spoke, his lips fluttered and his long beard played in the slow breeze. “I have a reason for what I am doing.” He said. “I believe that when the bad stories are all consumed the good ones will surface. And then I can harvest them, unstopping. So I never stop creating new stories, because you never know when you step upon a priceless gem, for which you had spent a lifetime, searching.”  

The young writer returned without a word more. He knew absolutely that he had found his path, this time not of death, but of an eternal life, full of possibilities.

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Godlove's Duty-III

III

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I did not know if my story would be comprehensible for this little kid who was just going to have his first days in school. He might not understand what doing a job actually meant. Perhaps he was just looking at the gold coins Godlove had received, in which case my story failed. But there was something I learned from Rekha, just ten minutes before when she mentioned reading a few chapters of my memoir: that whatever one does in the quest for personal wisdom, affects the cosmos profoundly. If the personal attempt is truthful enough, it can have the capacity to bring infinite change.  

“God bless you Rahul!” I said. He smiled at me once again and holding his mother’s arm stepped into the drizzle. Rekha thanked me and said, “Your words are blessed, Lal sir.”

If only she knows how the story came to me, I thought.

“Thank you!”

__END__

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