Tunnels

You are in a tunnel and you’ve been in it for hours so long it seems days. Ahead is a little round dot of light a dot that gets no bigger, no matter how fast you walk, but you know sooner or later you’ll reach that dot, and when you do, it will no longer be just a dot, but it will have grown to be an archway, and you will leave the tunnel.  You know because you’ve been in other tunnels before and in every one, the little speck of light grew. The archway it became looked different every time, but how it looked never really mattered when you were faced with the relief of being out.

But now, while you are still trapped in this dank, dark, lonely, soggy, smelly place, the simplest and easiest way to stay focused is by picturing the end of the tunnel and what you will see. Fields and fields of trees and tall grasses, a house nearby, a main road. The smell, the sounds, the sights – you imagine it all, fix it in your mind.

Hours pass and you find yourself nearing the end. Hope for the earthy wind, smelling of green and the taste of that cool stream rushes through you like a burst of adrenaline. The arch nears. You are out.

But there is no stream. No grass. No trees. No house. Instead, dusty breeze, hot and dry skim over your sweaty body. There are rocks, foot worn paths, brambles, bushes, canyons. Your fantasy lies in shattered pieces and the disappointment and disillusionment make you wish to rush back into the tunnel you so detested, because there, your dream was so much more alive. The hope of the dream was better than no dream at all.

Should you stop and wait till the confusion and anger passes, you’d find that the canyons, though not a meadow, are still far better than the tunnel. There is open air, a fresh smell. There is space to walk. There is light. There is a path. The problem is not the canyon. You were imagining what you saw before you entered the tunnel – the past. But through the tunnel, you’ve travelled far and the meadows you left behind – miles behind.

There’s only one thing for it, really. You’ll meet another tunnel (you always will – that’s life) and this tunnel will be deep, dark, long and lonely. And there will be that little dot of light, steadily reminding you of the end. Just imagine the light. Don’t go beyond that. Don’t put a picture to the openness, to being out. Don’t put a smell on the wind, or an expectation on the sound. Just focus on the light and let it keep your feet moving.

Love for the Wounded Soul

It makes a mock of its own name;

Clenches fingers round the neck

Of innocence that long ago

It owned – yet now to wreck

That pure is the delight it laughs to never keep in check.

.

The healing scabs it pulled away;

Reopens wounds that time would mend.

Watch it bleed with morbid intent;

Determine that its hands would send

The pain it feels to those whose pity it would end.

.

May I hate such bitter fault

That’s wrung from cruelty’s gruesome grip?

Cringe and buckle against the soul

Whose pain it cannot bear, and so rips

Another soul to make it share the agony upon his lips?

The Flash Dance.

And here’s the long awaited flash dance….

46 dancers in total, more than 60% of them over the age of twenty-one. It was such fun. They even demanded an encore!

Prelude

Who’s heard of a Flash Mob Dance?

I know; something with a name like that doesn’t seem to sound ethical or positively entertaining. It’s not half so bad as you’d think, though.

We’re doing one here in Hyderabad. It’s one of the biggest functions we’ve undertaken in ages, made more so by the fact that the parents have told us that they will support us completely, but we’ve got to make all the phone calls, arrangements, coordination on our own. It other words, they’ll just stand by and watch. Good leadership and management training.

One the first of August, International Friendship Day, more than fifty people are going to mob Inorbit and dance. I can’t explain to you the technicalities of how it’s going to be done, but hopefully within a week and a half I’ll have a video to put up and you can see for yourself.

Dearest Oblivion

If you read too much Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Bronte and Tennyson, your mind becomes fairly one-track, and colours, nature, fashion, and humanity seem to have lost their lustre. Then you write poems like this:

–

Dearest Oblivion,

Where have you gone?

When desire rakes

For your presence,

For your darkness,

For you nothingness;

When hands reach, grasping

In vain attempts

To recapture a vapour of your trail

And soul perilously yearns

To follow your fading steps?

Dearest Oblivion,

Where are you now?

When will has flamed

From mild want to desperation dark,

Nursed and fanned by

Black thought and dreams bitter;

When the last rents of hope are piles of ashes,

Grey, dead, and life

Reaches into the real inferno that destroyed hope

With wild intent to cast

itself away, rather

than live without?

–

(Of course, depressing free verse is exactly what the Literature Board of Cambridge seems to enjoy. The world really needs a bit more happiness.)