Complete … is a word that has always intrigued me. I feel inadequate the moment I say that I have completed something.
What exactly makes you complete? There is seeking for stability, security, a sense of self esteem which is considered to fall within the conventional realm. Then there may be the seeking for perfection, even excellence. There is a constant search for a sense of being part of a structure … a social system, a family, a relationship. There is an incessant longing for feedbacks and acknowledgement for the acts that come into being through us. There may be a pursuit towards experiencing a certain role … that of a spouse, a parent, a grandparent. There are milestones we chase, gifts and approvals we aspire for and through all this we seek an experience which is consistent with the ‘logic’ of being complete. Do we find it?

Perhaps…… it is the very obsession with being complete and bringing closure to something that causes the experience of completeness to confound us.
It is the concretisation of the life experiences which keeps us deprived of being connected through the universal continuum.

No one can deny the importance of structures … material and social. They are the very medium via which one can enjoy the tangible experience of the life process. What needs to be understood is that they are ephemeral in their existence as structures and eternally connected as gradients through the story of the Universe.

How about a seeking that morphs through those roles… the one for stability, security, affiliation, approval, esteem, perfection, excellence and then just goes beyond all of this into a space less travelled? How about being inspired in a way that the unknown and unexplored feel like the friend one is looking forward to meeting? To be looking at challenges as an opportunity to experience the splendour of the process a little longer, to be enjoying darkness as it holds within its expanse the possibilities that are waiting to be unravelled, to be enjoying the pain …. physical, emotional because it heralds the coming in of a new state of being, to be in awe of the moment that connects one with the Nature’s wisdom which is way bigger than my conscious awareness ……. To be in Love …. with life ….feeling delightfully incomplete and then …. may be… be blessed in a moment with a rare feeling of having experienced the Universe……complete!!!

Amruta Nerurkar

Sat inside this old bus shelter
painted cream but soured to rust,
overcoat with old loose button
no wife no more to sew it on:
Heard the bells chime out
at midnight,
sinking
thinking
what have I done?
Sitting
nudging at some old tramp,
come on mate just giz a swig
white cider lifts my guilty conscience
but life just goes along and on;
Chase my mind to three years back
a hillside church in Skiathos town,
no-one there
just me and God,
through stained-glass window
saw sun on sea
and just for a moment
everything felt good.

(Martin Nicholson has asserted his right to be recognised as the author of this work)

It was my boyhood pencil, that
Kept me busy
into my present –
Doing sketches:
Drawing lines, and
an alphabetical curves

I am no more
A grown up man
Exercising my age
Still there lurks
An innocence
into my bygone imageries
Behind every words
That I write presently
Crying by my septuagenarian thoughts –
What for this grey hairs
What for this time

Still, I treasure my innocence
Writing my pen
Giving a graphite thought to it
Full of ink
On a blank white paper

Amazon is burning and with it my heart is burning.

The fire was not created by slamming of two stones,

Nor did lightning fall from the sky

To create this mayhem of ravage.

Can Planet Earth, without the Amazon be envisioned?

The nuclear superpowers committed

To global security and safety of environment

Must save Amazon, the lungs of the globe.

We are living in an era of herd mentality

Where people care more for themselves

And lesser for what is around them.

Deforestation is affecting our oxygen supply,

Injuring our health and the pristine beauty of nature.

Our rainfall is threatened and with it our crops.

Thinkers of exceptional sensitivity,

Responsible botanists and men and women

Poised and savvy, shocked to the core

Are waiting for a panacea for this evil.

Like moth to flame, we are drawn

To the illusion of materialism

At the cost of putting Mother Nature on her knees.

Amazon, like the phoenix, rise from your ashes.

The orangutans are beating their chests,

The rabits stunned and the colorful birds

Are fluttering their wings in agony.

So many species of animals and plants are affected.

May nations across the globe unite their efforts

To stop the burning and smouldering

Of our beautiful Amazon, so loving, so motherly.

Save Amazon

pramila khadun

Let the hair open and feel the breeze
succumbed to heart wrenching injuries
posing for more stimulating experiences.

Let the hair let loose like Maa Durga
be a warrior woman and ride a lion.
Be the shakti- the strength that reflects your dominion.

Let the hair flow free in the wind
and feel the power of tenacity
upholding it with utmost purity.

Let the hair fall with stance of newness
chasing every dream in the most versatile manner
creating one’s valor with utmost desire.

Let the hair hold the onset of ingenuity
building the charismatic flair
laying down as calm as a mere.

Let the hair behold the power of Maa Kali
the symbol of energy- the Shakti
curating the portrait of audacity.

Mehak Gupta Grover

Concinnity we wish on earth

Effulgence we desire in personalities

Beauty we want to relish all around

Peace we prognosticate

Ebullience we look for in ourselves.

But the arduousness to expunge others,

devising canards

is getting intrinsic

as haemoglobin in blood,

using chicanery in all spheres

reducing humanity to a mere formicary,

walking in long queues

from paths of heaven to gates of hell.

The evening I walk past the street,

The soft breeze came with a smell so sweet,

And I went back to my childhood days, as I remember

The pink bunch of flower grasping a twig of the creeper

Hanging from the boundary wall of our paternal home

That my gracious sweet old granny had sown.

The warmth of her hug, the smell of her white Sari

I do remember the little girl longing for a story.

The nights passed with dreams of fairies,

And the days rolled without any worries.

The warmth of mom’s calling by the nickname,

I wish the days would have been the same.

A bowl of puffed rice and some oily snacks

The smell of mustard sauce and the lengthy yaks

The scuffles with sister over petty things,

And the sounds of laughter filled the evenings.

Boundless love of Dad was the greatest riches, Gone were the days of perfect bliss.

A LOOK AT LIFE -52
BY-SMRUTI RANJAN MOHANTY

A LIFE WASTED

How pathetic looking back
to that beautiful garden dying
leaving a few green patches
struggling to breathe and remain alive.
The thread that binds, the love that sustains
in moments when things are nice and fine
hardly withstand the midday sun.
A winter shower shatters all, bonds, ties and tie ups
and land you in a solitary asylum
where one finds none
How difficult to accept the truth
to realise the reality,
a life believed to have been lived to the full was, in fact, a life wasted and lost
in mundane deeds and fragile relationships.

Future looks hazy
with the hangover of the past chasing
and the reality of the present pinching,
life is never easy.
I am in a cocoon,
neither it leaves me nor i live in it,
with my heart and mind in chains, neither i come out of the past nor accept the present, sway in between, having no future, absolutely nothing to look at.
Caught in a noman’s land with no options but to silently endure the moments,
wait for a sad and unceremonious end
and accept the reality of life which majestically stands on man and his selfish needs and changing priorities.

©smrutiranjan18.9.2018

• 

I just saw a word ‘Humanity’
written somewhere here,
O Yes! On a page of our mortal book;
Somewhere right here!

And then it vanished from the sight,
don’t know where?
Might have disappeared
somewhere into the thin air.

Still recall that good book of ours,
O God! Still recall those letters of that
heaviest, mightiest word;
How on earth I lost that word!

It was a byword for peace,
a second word for a lifeline called
universal brotherhood;
It also meant compassion.

O World! Will you help me
to find that lost vital piece of man?
It was a jewel once worn by the wise.
Must’ve met a fatal end, I guess.

Alas! Must’ve been eliminated
and buried in cold blood,
on the orders of the worldling.
Our poor pal was last seen with the virtue.

Copyrights © September 2019, Dr. Nikhat Bano All rights reserved.