Light Divinity

Like every other day I was playing my guitar. I love that guitar and it is magical I must say, quite literally, at hindsight. It was almost midnight when I was sitting in my balcony playing a Joe Satriani lick (or at least trying to). While I was trying the riffs, I started playing some of the notes without my knowledge. Suddenly any note I hit sounded heavenly. I did not do that deliberately, but it sounded as if those notes were ever made to be played at those times in those riffs. At first I just assumed that I was a bit tired and any music sounded good at that time of the night. But the calm chill of the air only added to the goose bumps along my spine.

All of a sudden I stopped playing my guitar as if someone held my hands and pushed them away. There was a blinding light that flashed for a few minutes and then endured. The environment became so vibrant and so energetic that I started to perspire. My hands with the ease of a maestro went to the guitar and started playing notes that I had never heard before. My fingers seemed so supple and numb that I could play anything. I was sure that these notes existed, but I had never looked at them like that before, nor played them with so much passion. It was like this guiding force in my fingers that let me play whatever that came to my mind without a moment’s thought.

I tried to peer into the light to find someone or some form. I could see none. The energy of that light was so much, that I could not even hear anything. It was like this noise that was inaudible but so loud yet comforting. It was like a dream sequence where everything that happened only felt good. I continued playing the guitar on and on still looking for some form in the source of light. By now the light had spread all around me and I could only see the light. It was like I had come so close to the sun. And suddenly I heard a voice.

It was first a low droning sound. It picked up in frequency and changed into a very sweet melodic angelic voice. The voice was singing in some strange language. I first doubted if it was Russian or French. But as the voice became clearer I realised it was only a melody without any words. It would be difficult to explain how there can be such meaningful music without the use of words. They seemed to be fitting in with what I was playing. Then I realised that it was actually following what I was playing. The sight and sound was so over whelming that I was about to break down. But the light just kept sourcing me with some energy. It was heavenly. It was as if the Lord was pleased with me and came to sing with me.

By now tears were rolling down my eyes. I could not take it anymore. I started to scream. I screamed out loud asking it to stop. I screamed out so loud that I was sure it would awaken everyone around. But I was wrong. The energy around me had enveloped everything and was binding anything I said or did. I was going crazy. It was like I was on some drug, whose effect is taking over me. I started feeling dizzy and everything around me was turning into a blur. It was all so hazy and indescribable when I passed out and fell, presumably to the floor.

Subconsciously I felt that some one was carrying me somewhere. I felt like a new born being carried to the mother – a feeling which I can never forget in my life. Some voice whispered something inaudible. I could feel someone speaking into my ears though. It was something important. It was also a lullaby I think because I went into a deep sleep after that. It was like a rest taken after a very long arduous journey. I didn’t know where I was. I knew for sure that wherever I was, I was safe and comfortable.

When I woke up next, it was around 4 AM in the morning. I was lying right next to my bed on the floor. I don’t know how I reached there. I could have not possibly slept so well on the cold floor. My guitar was lying on the floor in the balcony. I got up immediately to pick up my guitar and place it safely. It was shining for some reason. Its black sheen was brighter, and more energetic I thought. Anyway, I was glad that nothing happened to the guitar, which I decided that I must have dropped in my sleep, while playing it in the balcony.

Something dawned on me suddenly. Until yesterday, I did not own an electric guitar. It was a dream that I had seen. It was my acoustic guitar I was playing in my balcony last. How could I have been playing an electric guitar without an amp in my balcony? I was so overwhelmed by my dream that it did not occour to me that my acoustic guitar got transformed into a Stratocastor – a dream guitar. I was shocked, dazed and literally trembling in fear. What had happened in the night? I ran outside the room to check where I was. Everything was the same. My parents room empty as they had left it 3 days ago when they left for a holiday. The kitchen lights still on as I had left them. My laptop power discharged and shut down.

I sat there trying to find composure. Trying to relax and concentrate to think of what had happened in the night. I could not think of anything. Just then I started humming a tune. The words were so meaningful and clear and with some message. It was a song that I had heard, but I didn’t know where. It was something that really never existed I think, as far as I knew.

‘Take my hand while you are lost

There is no way I will let you down

Before you lay your lost cause

But there is still a long way now

Fear not what lies within your reach

Fear not what lies beyond

Fear only all the forces in you

And all the fears you found

Listen to me Oh wandering one

There is no way you can turn back

And while you ponder o’er what I say

Walk on before it is dark

Fear not the chance of being hurt

Fear not just being defied

Fear only the thoughts that pull you down

And the reasons you never tried

And as I whisper a secret to you

I wish you may never forget

Fear only what blinded you

Not what your ambition sets’

Those were the words whispered to me last night. I was stunned. I took a paper and pen and wrote down the words immediately. I still had no explanation for what happened that night and what entailed after that.

My friend called me later that day and said that he was leaving the town in a few days, since he got the job he always wanted. He had an amp which he had never used and wanted to give it away. Without a second thought I arranged a meeting with him to take it from him. Throughout the day I could only see signs. Things that pointed to me what I should do and where I should go. One such notable sign pointed out that I must go to a particular coffee house that evening. Not knowing what to expect, I just sat there sipping on a coffee, when a group of guys entered the place. Behind them followed a very old friend of mine. It was his band he was with. They were looking for a guitarist cum vocalist for their band, since their lead guitarist was about to leave the band. They had a gig at hand, and they did not know what to do. I immediately offered my services. As time went by I had more and more influence on the band and the music we made. I even got them to rename the band from ‘Scalpels Forensic’ to ‘Light Divinity’. We are a very successful band now and have released an album called ‘Fear’ recently.

That was the least I could do to thank the light that saved me. It was something that changed my life. It was something that would remain in my heart forever as a pure experience of bliss. If someone asked me how would it be in heaven, you know that my answer would be – ‘Very bright!’

The last lullaby

Over the horizon there lies a little place
a place of refuge for everyone
no one ventures in their weary days
though they know thats where it ends

Under the sea far down below earth
theres lies a place for everyone
never swam so deep, never lurked
but they know thats where peace is lent

Come now see this, I dont know where its gone
but then i know its somewhere we oughtta go
till i wake up dont shake me of this dream
i just want to know whats in store


Over the hills hidden right behind
lurks the danger of unending sleep
never knew that it could be so kind
where the neverending bridge bends

Out in the open away from the sight
there is a place next to the sun
where things are seamless and time seems like light
where all the saved energy is pent

Come now see this, is that a bird or a plane
yet i know that its not as obvious as it seems
dont wake me up, is this the place to be
is it what we all always see in our dreams


How do i know when i reach this place
is there a landmark i can see
is there any map you could trace
to this place where im meant to be

Right next to me, there is a little place
i step into when i know im there
when i reach the end of this chase
it lies close to me, all God sent

Come now see this i have already reached
i can see what they all meant this to be
its pretty and surrounded by magnificent sights
a place of escape an a place to flee

Come now see this, im as happy as can be
while i lay down and heave a sigh
come now talk to me, sing me a lullaby
this peace is empty when ur not here to say goodbye

While the men craved for the moon...

and why do you stop me from saying
why do you tell me to stoop
and why do you feign greatness in lack of dreams

and when was the last time you thought
the last time you felt so human
and when was the day that you thought that we could leave


time will go by and the eagles take off
and i will just sit by the curb
and as i sit down on this hazy night
i felt the air around me disturbed


and why are the men so bent upon life
why do they die just to live
and is there a life that they assumed was present at all

and where were those wise men
who taught us to live
but left to lurk in the darkness by the light of day

and while i think of the greatness in you
things should just come to a stop
and when my mind is so full of noise
why do i hear your pin drop

and while the men flew and everything drowned
there is still a light air of truth
and while the men flew and tried to reach high
they all still crave for the moon

And we're back... (from the beginning)

It has been a while since I wrote my last blog and much longer since I wrote anything about dreams. My fascination with dreams maybe comes as a part of me because I am a Pisces. All said and done its just something I do which I am not ashamed of.

We all see dreams. Some dream about their goals, some about their love and some just dream weird. We all continuously dream of achieving something or being something. Yet we undermine our dreams so much. We forget that the only thing that we really are, or what we really not are, are our dreams. It is so personal and so close to us that thats the only thing that defines our mere existence. But why do we mock dreamers? Why do we deny dreaming of something the whole day? Why do we feign greatness in not having any dreams?

I believe that only when we dream of something have we taken the first step towards fulfilling it. There is no harm in rehearsing a speech of winning an Oscar over and over again until we get convinced that that is what you want to do! There is no reason why one should not keep singing to a packed stadium of fans in ones bathroom. Just like an athlete has to convince himself first that he is going to win, everyone needs a dream to make it come true. The actual preparation comes only after the conviction to achieve the goal is pure enough.

Sure we all have our limitations. Some physical, some social and some totally personal. Yet when we dream we break the realms of reality and reach a state where everything just turns out the way we want it to. It may seem absurd, but I believe that if u dream and believe in your dream, then things do change shape to accommodate it. There is absolutely nothing impossible in this world thereafter.

So let the lights of a virtual system fall upon your minds centre stage and dance for salvation of your hopes and dreams. Go into a trance and feel the power of your mind. Let the dream begin!

The Helen of Troy

The Helen of Troy thine beauty beheld
Where men of status and valour fell
She smiled to kill and weeped to kill even more
She arose to the tolling of the bell

What doth she hath, not one could think
With her, she spring and summer brings
And when she goes what can the birds
But of cold autmn and winter sing

She is the one, when men held their breath
When natures love and nicety fell
But love for her brought the fury of thee
And the nastiness of the knell...

A beautiful mind...

He took a step, to unite his will
He walked the way to find the end
And it took all his life just to look for the thing
What he dread and what he had won

The spaces in between tried to swallow him
But he fought out his way he fulfilled his whim
There is no turning back for this warrior
He has taken his first few steps


Beware all ye mighty men!



Thousands of ideas crept into his brain
Like little spots of flame that fuelled his desire
And he would be cursed to spend his life, to fight till the end
But then he will know as the man who knew to fend


And all the people say "there is no one like him"
His mind is the great sun - the rest of them orbit him
There is no stoppng now for this collegiate
He has dropped the first ingredient


Beware all ye mighty men!

Now I'm here and then I'm there...

Every now and then we come across such huge words such as trust, commitment, love and friendship. What do we really mean by all these terms. We very so often use it with so much passion and voracity, yet when the time comes for the test we falter. We do not falter by a small step, but sometimes even give up the very basis of all our beliefs and start with an altogether new value-system.


Lets first talk about commitment. We as a culture and value-based society consider commitment as inborn and constantly try to pass on to the next generation its importance. We take it for granted that any decision is based on the belief that ultimately that is what is the holiest value to guard. Commitment in any relationship, be it family, friends, spouse, lovers or work is so important to us. The 'society' considers it a prmary requirement for the success of any transaction. We preach this with all our hearts and stare in disgust at anyone who differs in opinion. Yet we have faltered when the ultimate test was there right in our faces. Call it culture shocks or call it a blind-faith, but when we saw the Americans we slowly started 'modifying' our value system. Though I do agree that many of the changes were welcome and refreshing, one cannot deny that we faltered. We faltered to the degree that most of the things that were considered unthinkable are common place today. Changing jobs without any sense of gratitude, betraying friends and family for more personal gains, infidelity within acceptance of social norms and breaking of the Holier-than-Thou bonds of marriage have become part of our very own culture. So much so, that the much coveted teacher-student relationship in India is slwly beginning to weaken - the fault lying on both sides.


I am not here to question if the changes we have brought about to our lifestyle are for better or worse. The only point I try to make here is to question about how many times we asked ourselves the validity of the old system and new. Did we ever compare and then strike off what was wrong or redress it? Was it just blind aping or was it a well thought of change in attitude?


Well talking about commitment does make my point enough. It does show how much we compromise for comfort. Comfort not in the form of luxury, but comfort in the form of convenience. We are so used to the automated world of comforts, that our attitude has become such that we need an automatically changing value-system to take us through the path of least resistance.


After all our myopic eyes cannot see that the path of least resistance is the one favoured by destruction as well.

As I embark upon this journey...

Help me God to take a step

And to hold the helm at sea

Help me with the strength to go

And help elevate my soul

Tell my friends Im leaving now

But Ill be there wherever they go

Seek their wishes and tell me so

If you ask them, they'll tell you more

Give me spirit to rise so high

Give me breath to deeper swim

Give me might to slip from heights

Let me fall but within my might

Strength to endure the weather of time

Love to ensure to shield from crime

Stamina to endure what seems so wrong

Courage to see those wrong as right

Help me break inhibitions in me

Help me see what I could do

And as I embark on this journey new

Help me God to think of you.

Glug Glug Glug

If I were to ever write about the woman I love, it might not mean much to anyone. It may be ununderstandable as well. More so to myself. I have even been asked so many times by the protagonist herself why I love her so much. Some questions cannot be answered. Infact some questions dont have any answers. Even if it were asked by someone who you think you are answerable to.

What do we call love? Is it just the funny feeling you get in the stomach at a person's thought? Is it just a way of justifying some carnal feelings or is it a sense of security? Or is it just the fancy that you are being fancied by someone? It is difficult to tell. It is even more difficult to tell it apart when it transitions from one to the other. No one knows whether it was for better or for the worse. I am no wise old man who has seen too much in and of life. Infact I am still a fresher. Inspite of my innocence in worldly matters I can pretty much assure you that none of the people in love actually can tell you for sure that there is only one true reason to proclaim that they do so. Even the romances which start off with the worst possible motives could turn out to be a bond holier than what we all know as the Holy Grail. It does not change a thing. Neither does a chocolatey love affair turned into nightmare. The underlined fact remains that we do not know what we call true love.

Yes I do love her more than my life. But then again what did I say? How can I love someone more than my life if I dont care for my life which is the prerequisite to actually loving her? Do I really need to feel that I love her that much? Does the intensity matter if I in reality really care for her? Am I unnecessarily complicating things by thinking about unwanted things? Yes ofcourse my friend. Its difficult to analyse such a thing. It is like asking how hydrogen and oxygen could mix and quench your thirst.

The best advice anyone could give you now was to shut up and drink the water.

The anatomy of a democracy...

It was a very lazy sunday afternoon and I was staring blankly into my laptop. Like every other day I wondered what I was exactly doing with my life. I could even have rephrased and asked what I was doing in my life, to my life or for my life. They all made sense. Now suddenly, I have a feeling that this is not exclusive to me. It is a question every youthful brain asks its heart. Its never the other way round. The heart which has that priviledge is blessed and need not ask for anything more.

You can call the relation between the heart and the brain - democracy. Here everyone has a say in everyone elses matters. The parties partaking in the debate understand each other well but not too well. That causes a turmoil as to whether the heart and brain really know what they are doing. Its funny but thats how all democracies work. I wonder why that is still the best form of government.

Education, social acceptance, 6-salaries, and family (which includes pets :)) all are the fore-runners in the party called Brain. Arts, dreams, love and friends rule the party called Heart. The Heart party always talks about the feel good factor but loses out on the socially accepted scale of success. The Brain party keeps trying to stress on what is right and wrong. Sometimes they know that they can never exist alone, but sometimes they know that if the other did not exist they could have achieved so much more.

The Brain party still wishes that if they had their way they could have achieved that coveted post in the IT firm that the neighbouring government won, they could have settled sooner and brought so much more respect by deciding to take up the job against the advice of friends who were backed up by the Heart party. The Heart party still broods over the fact that they missed that chance to make a mark in the dramatics class had there been no interference from the Brain-backed school lectures. They still blame the Brain for missing the rock concert which would have lead to so many new contacts which they were necessary to boost their chance in the next band competition.

Well, it is not really only about the lazy sunday afternoon or about thebrain or theheart. Its not really about democracy. Its really about what decision we finally take. Its time the President stands up and controls the governing. Its time we awaken President Soul who lies in the background of every action. He lies in our sub-conscious memory and is the one who really must have the veto-power. Democracy is insufficient for the body. It must be a President-intervened Democracy. A form of governement only the body can understand. The form of democracy that makes us academicians by day and rockstars by night. It makes us managers by day and fathers by night. Sons by day and lovers by night.

It was never really about the lazy sunday afternoon. It was about what governing we must nurture to lead a life of contenment and happiness. The only motivation to awaken your soul and follow your dreams but within limits of humanity and within limits of day and night. This is not the end, it was always going to be only the first step forever.

Drowning

Where am I? Do u see my hand?
This turn was not even in my plan
I try to swim even if I cant
Drowning slowly into nothing

I set out in search of everything
That would explain the place that I'm in
I try to smile even if its grim
Set out for oblivion

Talk to me watch me - I'm falling for it again
See me through, walk with me before I drown again
Do u see me drown? Do u see me fall?
Do u not ever want to hold my hand?

Do u see the end? Do u hear the angels call?
Do u feel the way I feel in this land?

Can you see me bob? Do u even hear my voice?
I feel so deaf amongst this silent noise
I play along like a boy without his toys
Feeling nothing underneath!

I can walk on without this misery
Without a name as silent as can be
But when I feel the pain - let me scream
No one ever knows my name

Talk to me watch me - I'm falling for it again
See me through, walk with me before I drown again
Do u see me drown? Do u see me fall?
Do u not ever want to hold my hand?

Do u see the end? Do u hear the angels call?
Do u feel the way I feel in this land?


- With a lot of inspiration from Chirag with his brilliant chords

Change is permanent... like our dreams

Every step we take in time takes us so far. It takes us away from our past, our memories, our nightmares and ofcourse, our friends. We think the steps are small enough not to care about what we are leaving behind. But all of a sudden we realise that there is a such a huge void created between us and our past that nothing seems the same. We wonder if we just long-jumped over an abyss whose mouth is just getting wider. Now we have come too far to even wonder if there is a way back.

Small insignificant jokes one day make us laugh for hours on end. Memories of small meetings, outings and nights we never slept haunt us like a dream of the previous life. Longing forever, something we left back like a child who forgot his favourite toy when he saw a new one. Only that the toy he lost, was lost forever. Songs we played become anthems forever. Everything we took for granted suddenly become so important and significant.

Somethng about the movie 'The descent' scared the hell out of me. It was a horror story no doubt, of a group of friends going deeper and deeper into a cave and not being able to find a way back. To add to their misery they are haunted by creatures who hunt them for food. Those creatures were once human beings, who adapted to the caves and became cannibals. What scared me though was that it was so synonymous to our own life. Everytime they went further down I felt the suffocation. This I realised could be a subconscious sympathy that I felt for them. Its how we end up leading our lives. A descent into a cave that has no way to go back. A place where man eats man and you cant help but become part of them or perish. I know I have digressed beyond any reader's patience but I still think it was slightly relevent. We realise that things were so holy and innocent when we were just a year younger. You wonder if the world has any good place at all.

I was speaking to 2 of my friends the other day. All three of us now in different continents. We were reminiscing the moments we spent together at the top of tank onthe terrace and played our guitars all night long. Just lying on the back watching the stars and nothing came in between to break the harmony. We all know that we would give our life to spend another night on that terrace. We all know that there are new buildings to be built near that building which would change everything. Its nothing but a terrace with a view. It was nothing but the only free space we got. It is now a place we long for just for one more time.

Everything changes. Buildings change. Life changes. We have walked too far. When we get back we would walk over a huge vacuum. When we get back we would be different in all respects. We would be changed men who have learnt too much for their own peace. Yet we still long for those few moments.

Yet we dream...