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Let him dream,  the dreams he sees, dreams of crystal blues of shining pearls and various hues, of that what is fair, of that what is just, let him not see the truth that hurts. And that what went wrong let him not know. Oh! let him sleep in serene ignorance let him dream let him be...

Come to me when the fear does overpower and I will lull you with the tales of valour fear not the fear lurking inside you like the demons, it will be defeated too Come to me when grief strikes you hard and I will sing to you the songs of a bard grief too will falter, sorrow will leave and the shelter of joy together we will weave Come to me when you think you are all alone and I will show you it sits not on a throne it is love eternal that is within your heart loneliness will elope, don't break apart Oh, come to me when you feel there is evil and I will remind you of your true will for there's good within you, mighty and pious evil will diminish, in peace it will leave us Come to me when cruel seems your life and all that's bad, we together will wipe come to me when nothing seems alright we'll overcome with our spirits blithe...

Published in Fried Eye - the magazine on 15 September 2013 Click  here “Utopian dreams” they call it when a young girl or boy, mostly in their teens, dream of having that perfect life of “one true love” hyped by almost all the movies in the world. Let it be a movie on patriotism or a superhero movie, there always is an element of love present that gives the audience a good feeling about it. Yes, indeed love is important and I believe it is essential too. Because without love how can a mother give birth to her child or how can a father gift his child with everything the little one asks for. Without love there would have been no friendships and no protective siblings too. But when people do not put conditions on their relationships with friends, cousins or parents, why is it that one expects and demands so much from one’s spouse? Why are there the insecurities and jealousies that help the once-good relationship to fail so miserably? And then one is left to cry alone, feelin...

Your love is like a glass of wine it's always less than I ask for, its always more than I deserve, your love is like the ring on my finger I am embellished by its glint, It is admired now and again, It may not be commemorated at all times, but I will be incomplete, with a void if it's lost..

Take away the memories with you As you leave today Take away those happy moments Take away those tears too Because I found myself today When I lost you Take away my screaming self Who wails and withers in pain Take away the pink letters Take away the smiles too Because they know it’s over And there’s nothing we can do Take away all the pieces That reminds me of you But before leaving, Darling Take away my heart too Because it can’t love anyone else now As my love for you is true Take away all the reasons That might make you to stay Take away all the regrets That didn't make me stop you Because deep within myself I know you loved me too

For love that went wrong, I write tonight this song of stoics and emotions of hatred and devotions for the man who never kept his words for the woman who conceived each to be true for the broken promises and hopes high for the lost love and solace found for the letters unwritten and songs sung for the million tears and smiles few... for the woman who wanted to fly for the man with wings broken for the dreams shattered and heights unreached for the million places yet unseen for the vows forced and rules breached... for the man who loved with a frail heart for the woman too strong to falter for the anxieties felt and her insouciance for the feelings untold and truths confessed for the first song and their last dance for the realities that hurt and imaginations that solaced... for the woman whose courage was all she had for the man who shattered her only asset for the fears instilled by the cruel laughs for the claims of lov...

If only tears could heal... Poem to be published in Minds at Work 2 by FirstStep Publishing

She said she was a queen … of luck and fortune. Sitting on a street of Guwahati she laughed hysterically at her ill luck and misfortune. She said she was a queen … of wealth and all the riches. And she laughed at her tattered clothes and the bowl in front of her with a few coins in it. It was a fine October noon and we were on our mission of distributing clothes to the needy. After providing clothes and talking to seven or eight people living on the footpaths of Guwahati we finally met this mysterious woman sitting on the pavement near a Hanuman temple. Unlike the others she wasn’t crying, nor was she grateful when we gave her a saree. All she did was laugh at the world that passed by and pretended to ignore her. And when we were about to leave considering her to be someone who would not talk at all, she made us stay spell-bound with her  words. She told us how she was born in a well-to-do family but was made to beg on the streets, not by her parents, n...

This entry is written for a contest of Indiblogger  http://www.indiblogger.in/getpublished/ I was just wandering on the corridors of the school after my geography class with my fellow IXth grade classmates. And there was he, crossing our aisle smiling at one of my friends. Awestruck, I took a moment to regain my consciousness. ;) Clever me, I did not waste a minute and asked my friend who was he. And within seconds I gathered as much information about him as possible. "Teddy bear" was the first word that came to my mind (and also to my lips) after recalling him once more. A silly name it was to give to a handsome and yet cute guy christened Rahul. But for the next two years he spent at our school, this became his nickname. Ovations to me :). But he was not someone who would sit quietly after learning that I gave him a nickname just after a few days of him joining class XIth. Just the day after we got introduced to each other by our mutual friend priyanka, he star...

This story was published in an e-magazine Word Splash in its issue of July 2012, http://www.wordsplash.in/the-whiskey-lullaby-2/ We watched him drink his pain away, A little at a time, But he never could get drunk enough, To get her off his mind … Pain or love wasn’t the reason why Prakash was the town drunk. “It’s my passion,” he would quote while listening to the Whiskey Lullaby,” It depicts my freedom.” *   It was two years ago, in Swindon during his working years, when Prakash was first introduced to liquor. He became a lover ever since. Gin was the drink he chose as his first love, Tequila came second. His decision of never marrying or rather being away from women was well-known by all his chums. He would recite it every time someone asks him to settle down and get married.  A year went by quite peacefully with his “principles”- be drunk, spend all the money, come home after midnight, and never tie the knot. It was a call from the City Hospital, ...

                       “Madam ji, gulab le lo, sirf dus rupaiye ”, saying this a hand clutching a pair of red roses sneaked in through the window of the auto-rickshaw I was sitting in.  It was a traffic signal at Hauz Khas (Delhi) which just turned red when the auto I took had to pass the lane. Damn it. I had to reach Katwaria Sarai positively at 10:00 am and it was already five minutes to ten while the journey takes at least fifteen long minutes.  It seemed like thirty seconds of the wee tot time I had to reach my destination, was wasted by the traffic light. Indeed, this was in accordance with the lyrics of the song christened “Ironic” which said “traffic jam, when you’re already late”. I let out a sigh at the thought of this while another hand came in through the same window, to bring me back to consciousness, importuning me to buy a toy airplane, which I was sure I do not need. I shook my head, in a stringen...

Published in the February 2013 issue of  Good Times of the North-East As if raising a four-year-old kid alone was not enough, little Nikki had begun asking questions to her dad for which he had no answers. “Daddy, everyone in school has two parents, why do I have only one?” As a response, Ravi would pass the bowl of cereals, on the wooden dining table that doubles as a table for ironing the clothes of his customers, to his daughter and snap. “Eat your breakfast”. The laundryman would be furious at his daughter for being so questioning, and partly because he could not answer it, or rather because he had been asking the same questions to himself for three years. After he would drop her off at school, Ravi would realize that none of this was the little girl’s fault and his anger would change into compunction and sometimes, self-pity.  While his daughter would be in the school, pestered by the fact that her father forgot to pack her lunch box again, Rav...