My list of the most essential Urdu Poetry

A great deal of gratitude and thanks to rekhta.org for providing the original poetry and to ChatGPT for offering the translation. Any minor translational or contextual discrepancies produced by the model have been corrected by me. Feel free to highlight any remaining gaps or mistakes in the comments. Enjoy!

Kahan Aa Ke Rukne The Raste
By Amjad Islam Amjad

Kahan aa ke rukne the raste, kahan moD tha use bhool ja
Wo jo mil gaya use yaad rakh, jo nahin mila use bhool ja
(Where the paths were meant to pause, or the turns meant to stray, forget.
What you've found, hold close to heart; what remains unfound, forget.)

Wo tere nasib ki barishen kisi aur chhat pe baras gayin
Dil-e-be-KHabar meri baat sun, use bhool ja, use bhool ja
(The rains destined for you fell on another's roof instead.
Oh unaware heart, heed my words: forget them, forget them.)

Main to gum tha tere hi dhyan mein, teri aas tere guman mein
Saba kah gayi mere kan mein, mere sath aa, use bhool ja
(Lost I was in thoughts of you, in hope and doubt alike.
The breeze whispered softly to me: "Come with me, forget them.")

Kisi aankh mein nahin ashk-e-gham, tere baad kuchh bhi nahin hai kam
Tujhe zindagi ne bhula diya, tu bhi muskura, use bhool ja
(No tear of sorrow lingers now, nothing lessened after you.
Life has forgotten you; so smile, and you forget them too.)

Kahin chaak-e-jaan ka rafu nahin, kisi aastin pe lahu nahin
Ki shahid-e-rah-e-malal ka nahin KHun-baha, use bhool ja
(The wounds of the soul remain unstitched; no blood stains any sleeve.
There is no ransom for the martyr of anguish—forget them, believe.)

Kyun aTa hua hai ghubar mein, gham-e-zindagi ke fishaar mein
Wo jo dard tha tere baKHt mein, so wo ho gaya, use bhool ja
(Why are you clouded in dust and despair, under life's crushing weight?
The pain that once marked your fate has passed—forget it, it’s too late.)

Tujhe chand ban ke mila tha jo, tere sahilon pe khila tha jo
Wo tha ek dariya visal ka, so utar gaya, use bhool ja
(What came to you like a moonlit glow, blossomed on your shores in embrace,
Was a river of union that has receded—forget it, erase.)

Ashkon ko arzu-e-rihai hai 

by Abbas Qamar

Ashkon ko arzu-e-rihai hai, roiye
Aankhon ki ab isi mein bhalai hai, roiye.
(Tears yearn for their freedom—let them flow.
In this act alone lies solace; so cry, and let go.)

Rona ilaj-e-zulmat-e-duniya nahi to kya,
Kam-az-kam ehtijaj-e-khudai hai, roiye.
(Weeping may not cure the darkness of the world, it's true,
But at least it’s a rebellion against divine pretense—so cry, as humans do.)

Tasleem kar liya hai jo khud ko charagh-e-haq,
Duniya qadam-qadam pe sabai hai, roiye.
(If you’ve resolved to uphold the lamp of truth,
Be ready—for every step invites storms. Cry if you must.)

Khush hain to phir musafir-e-duniya nahi hain aap,
Is dasht mein bas aabla-pai hai, roiye.
(To always be happy is to walk untouched by life,
For in this vast desert, every step blisters the soul. Cry for what it means to be alive.)

Ham hain asir-e-zabt, ijazat nahi hamein,
Ro pa rahe hain aap, badhai hai, roiye.
(Bound by the chains of restraint, I can no longer cry.
If you still can, you are blessed—so weep, and cherish the gift of your tears.)

Gunpowder near the tree

This fictional writing has been the precipitating output from the lived reality of Ambush Drill done during the Counter Insurgency Training at CTJW Kanker CG.

So this write-up should bring coherence to all the brutal anarchy in my mind. Words being uttered on paper, such soothingness they bring, such order, as if it truly exists. And there is just so much in this world, unfolding at the level of self and all that, to give a proper name and order to things once in a while becomes the necessity to keep going on. For there have been times when I began reflecting, pondering, thinking about all that has happened—moments when I have tried to touch and feel the labyrinths of cause and effect proliferating across my life—I have mostly lost my way.

As a human being embarked upon the vastness of life, most of us, for an enlarged briefness of our times, have lost our way, have begun to lie. Consciously or unconsciously, there is just so much lying we are doing to ourselves. So this write-up will aim to beat that. I will take us back to the very beginning of life, when man began to leave aside his true original fate of a hunter-gatherer and took refuge in plenary civilization—the beginning of his original sin.

As someone who has spent dense moments of life and its consequential realizations in the jungles, I have things to say. When you take hiding in the dense darkness of the jungle, submerging yourself in the realm of shadows, and you fix your Light Machine Guns at the possible directions of the movement of the enemy, you sit silently, patiently, strategically in the pursuit of the enemy.

I want to ask… do you also sit this patiently and silently at any other time? Do you feel united within yourself, consolidating within oneself, one within oneself, when there is that lethal enemy out there? Is that then the decisive moment when you find the redemption from the eternal longing to unite yourself with something that is beyond time and space, and yet at that very moment you unite within yourself… Are you also beyond time and space then?

And when it's really, really cold out there and you take shelter under shrubs so that you aren’t entirely exposed to the whims of the freezing old sky, do you question your judgments of life to have been at any other place than this? Does that question arise in you? The question of different paths that you should or shouldn’t have taken and the final outcome of it all. And yet when you sit and lie down silently under the murky shadows of the shrubs, the slithering cold movement of the midnight wind and the total acceptance of the vulnerability of life, you somehow feel a different type of peace. A peace that is actually peace for yourself.

Your heart and ambitions melt away. You close your eyes and a thin smile of contentment passes through your face. You anyway didn’t like the aimless hustle-bustle of industrialization. You always had the original authenticity with which things you called by their true names and counted man as man rather than assets and liabilities, and you lied. To live, you lied. But you knew within yourself the very reason for which you lied. You were aware enough, though you were way too alert.

You close your eyes and feel the movement of noise in the silence of the forest. Your group of troops—five men you are—rest are sleeping, soundly snoring. Such beautiful cozy corners that their consciousness has found for itself, a warm corner with woods interminably burning in the cold, dreary, rough terrains of their minds. They are sleeping without a care in the world. I also close my eyes and take a restful sigh.

Death has common denominators. The snake that would kill them can also kill me. I am no different. I am their superior, but I am no different. If I don’t lose care, if I keep my alertness intact, then in my head, somehow, I think that my life is more precious than theirs, and it’s not true. So I will also be as restful and peaceful as them. I will also learn to snore while sleeping. Communism wouldn’t have been that bad as well.

I try to sleep but I can’t. My mind has been bitten by the hyper-activism that has come to characterize my life. Always alert, always judging, rationalizing, drawing patterns in this vast randomness. It hardly finds rest and coherence, the belongingness. So I sleep a dog’s sleep.

What I feel in this moment is the presence of something nearby. What could it be? Could it be the very enemy for whom this whole ambush has been planned? Has the enemy sensed the design and taken the counter-ambush tactics at play? Have they surrounded us from all sides? Is the shadow of the enemy falling on other companions of mine as it is falling upon me right now? Does death really have that common treatment of all? Would we all go to the very unknown once we are freed from the ambiguities of life, or would we go all alone, by ourselves?

I don’t feel fear as much as I feel the alertness, the presence, the aliveness, the different paths that would come and go. Life doesn’t flash in front of my eyes. It just keeps penetrating the deepest seeds of melancholy and desire and yet can’t make sense of it all. I thought that death would make sense of all that has been life, but it’s much more ambiguous than anything.

But I have that one regret… I should have loved more. Face, features, and characters aside, the warmth I remember, and it reminds me that we have always been animals, but we tried to love as social animals and it didn’t work. We had so many constraints. I felt so disappointed and sad that this world is not free.

We should have been much more free to enlarge ourselves, and democracy isn’t freedom. Speech isn’t freedom. Freedom to be who you are beyond the constraint of language or power or anything that can constrain us should be freedom. I hope I will be free after death, and all of us would be free in that unknown realm. I don’t feel that bad about dying right now.

Given my enemy is a guerrilla, someone who is fighting the enormous with scarcity, would he shoot me in the head or slit my throat, thus saving one bullet? So what should I expect now? Fucking hell, life never ceases to surprise. What should I expect now? I hope for a peaceful death, and I want him to shoot me in the head and aim properly. A bullet that renders me half-alive is the last thing I would want. To that, I would want my throat cut; at least there’d be no return to this world post that.

Neither of that happens. So what falls on my face?

I open my eyes and I see a large dark space in front of me, standing still, in unilateral trance. Is it the void within myself that has come to life, or a transmutation of splattered mass since singularity that out of any galactic imbalance has found its presence in a nondescript place, somehow close to a nondescript man? Is it then the remnant, the rudiment of singularity? Then why does it not suck me in? Why do I not cease to exist independently then?

It’s not a guerrilla nor a black hole. So what is it? An imaginary entity borne out of my hallucinating lucidity. So then, is it just a dream? To confirm, I open my eyes with force, forcing my way into reality, day in and day out, as if life lived hasn’t been real at all, so the eyes have to be opened much more than they naturally open. And yet despite all that effort, it concretizes within me that it’s not a dream.

The entity in front of me has begun movement, and the way it moves makes me largely certain that it’s a bear that has strayed to the human warmth. It’s just a bear. Silly me. And yet, in the very same moment, I assure the presence of my AK-47 rifle near me, just in case it hadn’t been a bear.

A bear is not as lethal as a Maoist.
A Maoist is not as lethal as the void.
The void isn’t as lethal as the void inside.
And all that I think and feel is the ultimate truism of my life.

There are still a couple of hours left, and the chill has gotten all the more severe. I try to generate a warmth that doesn’t exist, and yet I feel slightly warmer. I assure the presence of all that has assured its presence to me and concentrate on the task at hand; that way, I don’t feel adrift. I close my eyes and think about good and bad things, and fluidly and swiftly I slither through their realms.

The only moments I stick to in my self-generated escape to the labyrinths of memory are the moments when I have made love. The touch of the very flesh, the total union with a human being, even if that’s never you. The moments of unconstrained violent passions within the four walls of the house. Maybe the most suitable place that is worth mounting LMGs is the perimeters of the houses where a man truly, truly loves something.

In such thoughts, my mind is invaded by the humbleness of sleep, the way rain fills the empty vessels.

I wake to the singing of the bird that doesn’t exist in this forest, and I know that this is the signal sent by the scout party that has seen the enemy from a distance. In the radio set, the movement is confirmed. It is ensured that no movement is made, no noise comes out. All that isn’t supposed to happen in the forest shouldn’t happen.

A man shouldn’t snore or cough. No activism or alertness should be shown. All should become part of the jungle, and the jungle would remain what it is—a jungle. The movement has to be made only in the moment when the majority of the enemy has come into what is called the “killing zone,” that is, the alignment that is perfectly and strategically visible to us and that would ensure maximum damage to the enemy.

For the very first moment in the entirety of his life, our enemy would be moving the closest to the destination whose beginnings began a long time ago, and the saddest thing would be that he couldn’t ever turn back and truly gaze at the beginning.

In that tiniest fraction when he would appear in the killing zone and the triggers would be pressed from our side, he would have all the time to recollect what he is or was and would be. In that moment, he would meet the ultimate cause.

So when they all—the contours, the silhouette of them all—appear in the killing zone, I, as the firing commander, have the responsibility to shoot the first bullet. Post that, the entire ambush party would wreak havoc upon them, carpet-bomb them through the UBGLs. All of us would want to kill all of them. But I would fire the first bullet.

Maybe that’s why I couldn’t sleep and snore as soundly as my troops. But I would fire the first bullet nevertheless.

And then, when the time came, I didn’t just fire the first bullet—I emptied three magazines, that is, ninety bullets of it all, whose warm, empty shells splatter all around me. And somehow, in the recesses of my heart, I longed that every single bullet was a headshot, for half-life is as wretched as half-death.

And when I was done emptying the burden of my responsibilities, I felt a deep chill inside my heart. I gathered around the empty shells, and in their warmth across my hands, chest, and back, I felt the warmth that had been totally alien to me.

And the gunpowder all around me was a thick veneer below which I felt the much-needed protection from the cold.

Delusional Meanderings

Collection of my intermittent writings which largely has taken a poetic form

What do you see?

What do you see when everyone stops looking?

What do you hear what no one hears?

What do you want to say that has never been heard,that has never been uttered?

What do you fear for when rest upon your bed and close your eyes?

What thoughts do you think that no one thinks of 

and why these unending motions in head

mostly against you?

Why dont you fall into the submissive clutches of the nights?

Why does your consciousness still remains cocky 

post daylong beatings

Why does it not soothe down,bathe down,die down towards gradual nothingnness and erosion?

What things do you want to hold with a secret craving of never loosing it?

Would you never loose it?

And what do you desire?

do you still desire?

I think these thoughts now and then.

I think of them at very different settings and situations.

I think of them inadvertently driving my car,

sometimes before sleeping,

when i am drunk and high,

when i am seriously postulating my life.

most of the times.

I think of them and let them go.

I never sit down and resolve them reasonably for once and for all.

Somewhere in between i began to believe

 that certain problems are essentially insoluble in nature 

that their final and redeemable solution is not possible.

So I don’t entangle myself in that.

Maybe thinking that way,

seeping all over my associated thoughts 

i began to believe a much substantial part of life to be insoluble and inconsequential 

and thus action,that intent to act and alter 

has diminished.

I think of lots of other things 

when i lie down awake in my bed,sleepless.

I think of childhood memories,

of unbridled joy,

of nice and cozy people and their unconditional love 

showered upon me.I

 think of incalculable instinctive intrigues that my little heart suffered 

meandering towards much of the beauty in this world.

Exactly when,the date or the year being unclear,

cant say when i lost or reduced my desire and inquisitiveness towards this world,

towards its colors and fragrances,

towards its bikes and cars,

towards stuff and all.

Even though i keep collecting new and newer things,

I dont go down deeply and enquire them once i have collected them.

I pluck a flower plenty of times,

but do i ever smell it,

do i ever feel it against my lips,my cheeks and my forehead?

Have i ever known who she was?

what she was as a person?

Did i ever know as long as i was with her?

Was she just a collection?

Do i sense a slithering movement in my dark room?

of what?

A formless snake?

An unfulfilled desire?

her celestial?

Would i ever know the unknown?

Would i ever care what knocks at my door much late post midnight?

Do i ever postulate in waking reality the nature of what knocks at my door post midnight?

Do you also feel that when the train stops at a hinter location

somewhere remote,

you should jump off the train and begin a new life there

and it wouldn’t matter if you jumped.

That it wouldn’t matter 

if you didnt jump too?

What do you think?

would it matter to you?

Do you think these things?

Does something knocks at your door too?

Would you ever open?

Do you want the much known unknown to ever manifest itself?

Would there something left still to live for,long for,crave for?

Would that be final and irredeemable union with the all eternal uncaused cause,the yoga?

Maybe thats why people hung themselves in  Korba after long drinking sessions….They met the uncaused cause?

Have you ever wondered about snakes?

Such peculiar enigmatic creatures?Have you ever seen a snake when it hasn’t seen you?

Do you think it isnt real?

That snakes we see are not real?

No they arent ropes.

They are contours in our heads of the things that were never expressed.

I see snakes all the time.

You wouldn’t believe at what incredible places i have seen plenty and diversity of snakes.

I have slept besides a snake.

Been bitten off once i kept my foot down on floor?

been hissed at by it from my shower?And it keeps sitting rolled through that painting that Bengali Girl gave me?

Why does a snake that is petty yet poisonous keeps itself mired in that painting?

It doesn’t leave that painting at all?

A dark room opening to a bright balcony full of flower vases and creepers?

Does the snake sees the snakes that are there in that dark room in that painting that the bengali girl gave me?

Does the desire itself inheres much deep longings in itself?

Do snakes also see snakes?

Is the universe of unexpressed desires and sufferings still expanding?

I asked you so many questions 

and yet 

didnt give a single satisfactory answer and you keep looking 

for answers?

Have you ever asked yourself the questions 

whose answers you are looking for?How would you draw 

from the formless ether 

the forms to put to questions 

to the almighty 

once it manifests itself in front of  you?

Or have you stopped believing 

that the answerer wont ever manifest in front of you?

So you keep playing those questions to yourself 

in your head 

answering on your own,

like that kid who is not able to open his lunchbox

for the the afternoon break but still keeps trying?

Why does that kid doesnt ask for help?

Did his father never taught him how to open it 

or his mother always opened it for him?

Did he become a man of this world?Why do all kids grow to become man and woman?

Can the seed of desire grow itself as a tree on its own?

Do senses nurture as much the soul as much the soul nurtures it?

What do you think?

How long would you carry the questions in your head?

How long would you keep after that screwed up lunch box?

You wont die if you didn’t eat.

Nothing would happen.

Desires have to die before death for you to properly die

and desires donot die.

Do we not ever properly die?

How long does the Samsaar last?

Has the existential question become an egotistical question to you?

How much do you think is your longing to know?

How much do you want to know?

From the celestial motions of the universe

of each particle against every other particle 

what remains the same to learn?

When countless things in one thing keep on changing within that one thing

would anything ever solidify as conviction in your head?

Can you preserve the ever dynamic in a static storage?

Do you want the knowledge for knowledge

knowledge for the limits of knowledge

or the knowledge for memory in order to survive as a being?

Is your ever eternal quest to seek the unknown born out of the petty desire to rise and shine in this amorphous world?

Do you want power?

Are you seeking power over others to fulfil your dream?

Do you want to become a good parent to others?

Did you not have good parents?

Were they also looking out for power and security and left that lunchbox for yourself to open?

You jump off from this long streak of writing.

You open social media and scroll and you keep scrolling.

You see countless individuals inhabiting remote spaces in the grand-universe

you see voluptuous women

women who want power in this world through their well shaped hips and breasts

they would arouse desire in you?

You would walk past it 

and you would see people sharing the most intimate detail about their lives

from the food they ate to the places they went to.

People share close intimate moments with the partners they love and that feeds desire in you too.

So you want a voluptuous woman

a roaming life 

and a substantial partner to have close moments with?

Do you want this toy 

because the other kid has the same toy 

or do you want this toy for the other kid has some other toy?

So why do you still keep opening that lunchbox when it is the same food inside it that they too are eating?

Why dont you get the same lunchbox as others to eat the same food that they too are eating.

Do we all want different dramas or the different dramas written from the same cathartic experiences?

Do we want the same drink in different glasses?

Do we know we want the same drink?

Do we feel sad when we know it?

Is everyone everyone?

Is this the yoga they talked about???

You want a way out.

You still imagine a way out.

Many out there have stopped believing that there’s a way out.

Many know and yet dont find it and live under the frustration and disappointment it fetches.

But what do you think is the way out?

Is the way out actually in?

Do you believe it?

Where does the road to the way out begin?

Is it an appropriate question to ask or a futile one?

Is your way out also the other man’s way out?

Would we all go out the same way?

Or would my way out be different and then would i travel it alone,all alone?

Do i have to go to the way out or would it come to me?

Does the coherence also seek me as restlessly as i seek it?

Why is yoga the effort only of atman..

Why doesn’t the bigger parmatma himself strives for unity of consciousness?

Why is the path of life supposed to be rigid?

I should ask Rahul Sharma’s ghost.

He killed himself right here in this room.

Was that also a way out?

How is association with brahma with thorough stoicism of years precipitating under snowy mountains any better than a revolver at your head?

Is all spiritual striving born out of a grave fear of unknown?

Do boundaries actually exist?

Dear Friend,I am asking whether the perimeters in our consciousness actually real?

Do all think this much?

All can think this much.

All dont.

When would be that day when i will close my eyes and my consciousness would find an actual rest

My ever eternal self.

The coherence would dawn upon me.

In a grander bigger story,

a great fable,

the great many grand designs of this world.

In a serene acceptance of death

Of broken skulls and ripped chests

In cold dead eyes

In despair of the unbeatable.

Why do i not win that the ever burning fire of ignorance?

Why my being feels validated by the transient?

Is everything transient?

A labyrinth?

The thoughts that seep into our head,

roam into our head,

all the time

when do they go away.

When do you actually live voiceless in ur head?

Does it happen?

Are ideas and imaginations everlasting?

Do they never go away?

Countless men and women

with countless objects

With perpetual motion

With desires,longings and fears

With a drive that comes from the force of self.

Where all of them are going?

Where you and me are going?

From our own selves

To our own selves??

Would the coherence appear before the self or after the self?

And knowing all this

Do you negate the world

As unimportant or inconsequential 

Do you not acknowledge the joy that comes through driving a bike midway the jungles

Do you not like the talks and wit with friends 

Do you not like romance 

And mutual disclosure of all hidden and buried pain of yours

Do you not like getting dissolved in the flesh of your beloved?

Do you not like the union that comes though transient to you?

Would you discredit all of it to meet the self with yaan of self?

With the vehicle of self!

Is self not out there?

Is self of stone,of leaves of beating hearts different than your self?

Why cant we seek the self out there to find the self within when its the same self?

Why is the knowledge of your self superior over any other knowledge?

Or do you fear that your desires wont ever meet and then you desire something that could be attainable?

So you desire your self?

The flesh that you are made of

The flesh that others are made of

The desires that inheres in all of us

The ever eternal beatings within resonates in all of us

So isnt the self all over,spread everywhere?

Are u afraid of infinite patterns?

Same things happening all over again.

That theres no way to break free of it

That its personal and yet intergenerational

What has happened shall happen!

Do you believe that to be true?

Then prey tell where exactly is the human agency?

Where is our role?

What is there after all for us to accomplish?

Good habits

Towards What

Life long More desires!

More comfort!

More certainty and predictability!

For all of it

Or for service?

What service exactly do i do?

Where do I actually find the much needed fulfilment?

Restfulness towards the day gone

And excitement towards the day shining 

Where is all that?

In head?

In this blob of matter right here?

Does it all control it?

You keep writing continuously day in and day out,

trying to put up your entire mind on paper, 

but the mind stays.

A fear passes by.

Would the mind stay?

Is the anarchy possible within the confines of order?

Can you actually become a writer and a policeman?

Can you accommodate disorder and uncertainty in your head 

and yet become champion in material world

in the waking world?

What is your aspiration now?

You performed well in the schooling, you did decent in college, 

you wrote and qualified exams

 and landed up a great job.

Where is gratefulness?

Where is that sense of belongingness that you always looked after?

Why is it so difficult to communicate your thoughts?

Won’t they get it?

Why wouldn’t they get it?

Did they put up that much effort in uplifting you so that you could be crowned?

Crowned for everlasting solitude!

Or did you crown it yourself?

You crowned it yourself.

Does the pride stay?

Why does the pride stay?

A human that can be killed by an invisible things.

Keeps projecting strength.

It plasters pride across its mouth.

It is laced with rhetoric all over his face.

And it keeps projecting strength.

A lone meteor.

How long shall it remain suspended across the sky?

Someday it would crash coming down?

Would it not?

Burn itself in ashes.

Its already burning.

Have you ever enquired into the nature of mind?

Why cant the mind sleep on peaceful comfortable beddings?

Why does it turn and twist all the time?

When does it actually find peace and rest?

What does it sacrifice for the perpetual pride in which it glories itself?

Does it not find peace eventually?

It does.

You sleep in the car, 

on the chair, 

you sleep everywhere and anywhere when your entire system gives up.

Why does not your entire system give up at the end of the day?

What guilt remains?

I want to know as to what guilt remains?

Would it always remain?

When would you conclude your life?

How long shall this mental anarchy last?

This revolution against yourself?

What do you rebel against?

The order?

The order, that once diminishes results in rapes and murders of the innocent.

Why do you deride order?

Why is anarchy so pretty in your head?

When the entire nature of the universe is full of anarchical order?

That the cauldron of life death and change keeps churning.

But all churns within the cauldron.

Not outside.

You think they wouldn’t understand.

Have you ever made them understand.

Have you ever with a mountainous effort 

strived towards making them understand it?

They might just understand it.

At least you should have resorted to reason in the first place.

Maybe revolver mitigates the very use of AK47.

Dont you think?

Let me ask you a really simple question.

Why dont you pray?

Are you that invincible ?

Or that afraid that your pleas and prayers will be rendered unheard?

No one listens?

The anarchical cosmos doesn’t listen?

Do you actually believe it?

So that is why you do not visit temples and even when you visit them.

Nothing feels.

You bow your head down and wonder as to what to ask for?

What to say?

Where does the voice in your head go away?

Or are you afraid that you will be tagged weak?

But are you not weak?

Do you not turn and twist in your bed restlessly 

And yet when the day shines you feel as if anything is possible to you?

Who is not weak?

And who is strong?

What is strength?

A mere projection.

What if all the strong ones are masquerading as weak minions?

And all the weak projecting strength.

What shall you do when I make you the master of the universe?

What have you planned?

Have you planned zero causality roads and integrated transports?

Have you planned controlled births?

Have you planned the gradual erosion of unwanted population?

Have you planned the controlled use of digital stuff?

Have you planned men and women to meet through well established and coordinated networks?

Have you planned safer deposits of desires and express emotions?

Have you planned cities towns and villages, wider roads, lesser people?

Have you planned intact lives and lesser impact of death?

Are you afraid of dying?

Are you afraid of Never sleeping?

Are you afraid of these infinite patterns?

Are you afraid, 

that terribly afraid that you shall never be understood?

Do you understand yourself?

Are you afraid of the media, 

of diminished pride, 

of lesser resources?

Are you afraid of all these things?

Are you afraid of you becoming inconsequential and insignificant?

Are we not all insignificant?

Does that not give us relief?

Maybe I should write on peace.

Should I write on peace.

Indeed,i should write on peace.

Does not the very fear torment you that its all a construct?

Everything I wrote is a construct?

Every word written, every thought thought, every act acted is a construct?

For there could be infinite possibilities of being and living and expressing.

So can I write on peace?

Do you and I derive the same mental formation when peace is mentioned?

What is your idea of peace?

Do you feel something,

In your head-on your skin, in your gut,

You would call peace!

A being moving with the force of desire,

Can only be numb,

Can it be peace?

Would everything of sense and soul once emptied,

Would result in peace.

Is self a companion of peace?

Or the very nature of self is peace.

Have you heard of the very fascinating conversation Yajnyavalkya had with his wife?

Did he not say that in waking and dreaming reality,

Self is withdrawn beneath layers and layers,

Abyss and Abyss of amorphous formations.

What stays when everything has died out?

Nothing stays?

Does self not stay after death?

What stays when you sleep a dreamless sleep?

Is that self?

Am I writing entirely in the pursuit of emptying my mind of everything,

So that all that remains is the self,

If the self is all that remains.

Would I meet the self then?

Would then there be peace?

What moves you in the dreaming reality and in the waking one?

What desires?

Of survival, reproduction and thought?

Desires of thought?

Have you ever thought that everything thought,

Every question asked,

Every constrained felt,

Is not so called the mere discontent of civilisation,

But the foundational longing to know,

As to why the very particle that constitutes the entirety of earth,

Was populated with seeds of consciousness?

Why do we have that consciousness?

Why is that our nature?

Have you ever asked yourself?

Ever forced yourself into the belly of thought to realise,

That all questions,

All questions uttered from any living longing entity,

Is the question of its very nature.

Its existence.

What would come of me?

Now that I inhaled the beauty and misery of earth.

What monstrosity would I bequeath?

Maybe a dragon full of fire would eventually seep out from my chest.

And empty my lungs to such emptiness,

That all that wasn’t supposed to cumulate,

Wouldn’t stay accumulated.

The dragon of insatiable fire would fly away.

Somewhere far away to a glacial lake,

And find some type of peace for it.

All that charred me 

All these years

Was so eternally everburning.

Let the desire have peace away from me, 

And me distant away from it.

Let us both die in different lands.

I had read somewhere 

That life of man

Resembles that of a swan

An animal A creature 

That meanders and floats through

two worlds.

A creature of land and water

A creature of dream and disaster.

Man a creature of waking reality

And that of dreaming one

And also the one sleeping a dreamless sleep.

From what is real and what is magical

The interminable movement unfolds.

From torments of insatiable passions

to the very cold blooded reason

The Swan slithers.

Man withers.

Is that the notion of self?

As Ramkrishna Paramhans once prophesied,

That A swan soaring the skies

Is not you,

But when its shadows fall upon a lake,

Upon its whitish-greenish water,

The shadow of real,

Is you.

Is the true self of mine soaring highest of skies,

While i live dayinanddayout

In mistaken identity.

The shadow of the swan

The man of waking world

The man of transience 

The man,a medium of desire’s longing.

Is that the allegory of cave Plato talked about.

Is this how all life i have been living?

So dawning such awareness 

Is this my moment of metamorphosis 

My one existential crisis.

Can i walk now in captivity 

With a contentment in my soul

That my ever eternal self is free.

Free from me!

But then..

I had thought,

Like all of us,

ever since the act of thinking,

to find the ultimate harmony.

To live a life sans conflict

And even though i have hated it,

I have desperately longed for stillnes.

For disguised death.

I have longed

Like most of us,

ever since the birth of desire,

To feel complete, unhindered and free.

Freedom from dreaded nights, scorchful days

And sad faces.

Things beyond my realm of control,

I have longed to break free,

Free i have not been

Since the thought of fleeing is a lingering one.

Perhaps the cycle of life and death

have some deep concentric cyclicity.

Perhaps there is more life in living

And aghast deaths in dying.

I have died,

Like some of us do,

for civilization is end of unbridled life,

And i have been civil

And then the Eagle sang its song

Descend upon me, O Sorrow, from your dark heavenly abode,

And cloud all over my days of today and tomorrow.

For I have been a free bird, soaring the highest of the skies,

But some of the dreadful nights, I just don't know which way to fly.

Bring agony with you and grief too, and all the suffering renowned.

Tonight, I want to drench my feathers, tonight I wish to be drowned.

For, for a time eternal, I have hoped for my time to come soon,

I think I am done with the scorch of the sun, the cold contempt of the moon.

And yet in the dawn, my feathers expand and habitually i begin to fly. 

As instinct and As intuitions, the dreary habits come by. 

The illusion of the day, and the ascend of survival wraps me in its fold, 

And you humans, the walking ones,Call me bird of gold. 

But don't you reflect ever ,the tyranny of freedom that I embody, 

I have no clan, I have no nation, I fly alone and I am nobody.