You, Me and Our World

Between you, me and the world
Looms a sense of unsteadiness

Your power made credible by the world
Mine affected by the exercise of it

Our common knowledge of the world
Unaware of its exclusionary practices

I understand
I am on a slippery ground
Yet nailed to a reality you created

You own what’s offered by the world
I am one of them, you say

You can practice detachment being one from the world
I remain tied to meanings and consequences

Our journey together in this world
Viable in the absence of a scale to measure differences

It’s a matter of perspective
Yes, it is
As afforded temporally and spatially

Sphere: Related Content

Water on fire

The old molten rocks stopped the sea
A crab laughed
Water was set on fire

Sphere: Related Content

Ashamed Mountains

Dusty naked mountains were tamed

Tall pride run over by moving wheels

Their cry echoed

Sphere: Related Content

Destiny

A heap of rocks, pebble and soil
Gathered near a large pit
Wondering over destiny

Sphere: Related Content

Morning Sun

The morning sun peeped through the window
Sprinkling colour in the room
The rays smiled

Sphere: Related Content

Young Tree

Shortness of breath encircled the young tree
Submerged in dust
Wind blew away its leaves

Sphere: Related Content

Clouds

Feather-like clouds floating on their fuzzy edges
Suddenly cried out
A jet shred them apart

Sphere: Related Content

Birthday wishes

I’m told wishes are the only thing that cannot be bought or sold

But their value is far greater than gifts and gold.

Cold and lifeless, gifts and gold do not see or hear

And in the time of emotional churning they cannot even cheer.

Gifts have neither desire to listen nor a heart to understand
Gold cannot comfort or reach out a caring hand.

To cut the long story short, there will be good wishes galore

Neither gifts nor gold, only promises and promises and more!

Sphere: Related Content

Work Fever

So today you realized you have fever

You also realize travelling on work sucks
Ah! It’s the beginning of a horrible day
Sadly it wouldn’t just go away
But I hope it’s just that
And that you are not down flat
Not that I want you to
But watch out for swollen throat
And that rugged temper of yours too
It may just decide to go awry
Specially because you can’t be sorry
No time for ego-indulgence
I hope that those tabs help maintain balance
Remember not to take them on an empty tummy
For it will make your brain hummy
Also watch out for weather
It can only get rougher
And with loo blowing mad
The story of heat stroke can be sad
And your tongue may feel thick
Take iced tea to give you a kick
Not to forget, you must sleep
Don’t pace up and down or leap
Innumerable working days are ahead
So for a while befriend the bed
Lightheadedness is just a sign
Take note before fever makes you moan
And don’t act like a madcap
Just go, relax and take a nap

Sphere: Related Content

Creativity

‘There’s no life without creativity’, said a colleague many years back. She used to get annoyed at the lack of imagination. With her around, nothing was permanent, plans changed every day, consistent patterns were not the thing to look for … except, perhaps, consistency in her eccentricities. I might be planning a day off – actually, a weekend – to do nothing and to leave the mind blank and just at time there would be a call, ‘nisha ma, I have an idea … let’s do this by … ’. And I would sigh and say to her in my mind, ‘Why you didn't think of it before and why can’t you wait till the first work day next week’. Did I have a weekend or a holiday? No, not really, perhaps, four or five days in a year. My imagination had to follow her’s and make a contact with her creative spirit. My sub-ideas would follow and we would have animated discussions about the style of delivering the idea, planning the steps and on good occasions would also begin the implementation and bingo, the creative spirit would begin stirring again! Programme cycle management was an elusive venture. Occasional insights and non-stop manipulation of the phrases, ‘compliance with regulatory systems’ and ‘obligation to donors and participants’, would help me keep some things going. But more than often the planned action would give way to the persistent desire to innovate, to explore new ways doing and seeing things happen, to make creativity visible and more visible.


It wasn’t easy to manage creativity. The flashes of occasional insights used to be the last stage of a long process involving distinctive creative stages. The first stage used to be pre-empting the creative outbursts. The second, creative options for problem solving. The third, preparation for something altogether different – another more creative idea taking over the last creative idea. The fourth, options to deal with something altogether different. Did I realize that my own creativity was spent coping with my colleague’s creativity? Yes, that is one of the reasons I eventually left the organization. It was a free environment but in the hierarchy of creative order, my imagination could not roam free. It had to be a lot like the fire-fighters who follow fire.


But that brings me to the question whether all of us are creative or only a few are granted this delightful ability to innovate and imagine. I believe all of us are but some of us get caught in something like habitual fixedness. The day to day life does require a lot of order, unthinking responses and uncritical compliance. And this begins right from the formative years. There is a great danger of becoming so used to routinised way of thinking about practically everything. Because we are taught to look at the things in a particular way and have particular beliefs and so we see only the obvious way of coming up with questions, analyses and things to be created. We run into a situation where comfortable ways of thinking block innovation, deviation and imagination.


But it is not just the habitual fixedness, self-censorship and the pressure to be politically correct also suppresses thinking and an ability to see and create new ideas and things. It has the potential to make us a prisoner of what is deemed as ‘acceptable’. Actually even most creative people also have some or the other habitual fixedness or produce ideas and things along politically or socially acceptable norms. Creativity too is a matter of practice. I feel, it has to be acquired – constant mulling and pushing the mind to the limits is critical in order to step out of the box. Though some people go through this process and just when they are all set to come out and about, the fear of rejection hits and creative ideas and innovation are left in a permanent mental incubator.


Being alert and aware is not enough to be creative. The burden of realities may loom so large that every thought and every action may turn into a conscious exercise that may not allow ‘uncultivated creativity’ and beauty to surface at all. An alert mind, after all, is a calculating mind as well. It controls expressions, innovation and works of beauty from forming unpredictable associations. Without persistence to let go of the control by the mind, a random creative thought cannot be converted into a creative act or a creative creation.

Sphere: Related Content