Strangers

She was driving her moped, a scarf loosely tied around her head. Taking a swift right, she saw the cake shop. Her favorite cake shop in the city.

The last time she was with him, they had passed that shop, newly opened then, wanting to go inside. We'll go there when I come the next time he had promised. The next time he had come to the city, he hadn't called her. I can't sit across a table sipping coffee while knowing you're not mine, like two stranger friends, that's what he said when he texted her later, telling her that he had come to the city but was now gone.

Don't think about it now, it's of no use. She found a parking place, and took off the scarf. She daintily arranged it around her neck and peeped into the mirror once. Girls!

Carelessly fiddling with her keychains, she entered the shop. The pastries always looked so beautiful, she started lovingly at them. The salesboy smiled at her courteously.

"Yes ma'am?"

"Is that all the bakery stuff you've got today?"

"Uhmm.. Ma'am.. Can you wait for a minute please?"

The boy disappeared into another room. She stared dreamily at the cakes. Seeing something white in her peripheral vision, she turned to her left. She saw a glass cabin, and a man behind it just shifted a round cake onto the rotating disc. The man saw her staring at him pointedly.

"Ma'am.."

She turned and looked at the salesboy, having no idea when he had come back.

"Ma'am, can you please wait for a few more minutes, our bakery stock is just out of the oven. They'll transfer it downstairs in a few more minutes. Is that alright, Ma'am?"

She nodded, and turned her attention at the man who was making the cake. He had finished applying a layer of cream. He looked at her again.

He was around 40, with a belly. His cheap light green flannel shirt disfigured him even more. His hair dishevelled and his white teeth shining against his dark skin, his nose was equally blunt. His hand skillfully polished the cream layer.

He looked up at her. He could see a young woman of 20, admiring his work. He smiled.

She smiled back.

The microwave bell rang. He hurried to get the molten chocolate out and back at his revolving disc. He looked at her again, partially relieved that she was still there. He transferred the molten chocolate into another container. She looked at the passion with which she looked at all his actions.

He looked at her again, and smiled. She smiled back. The smile exchange remained something beyond any words they could have exchanged, as if there was some far deeper understanding between the two of them, something that can develop only through the years.

She took a step closer.

"Ma'am, the bakery products are here."

She again absent-mindedly looked at the salesboy who had appeared out of thin air once more. She hurriedly asked a sandwich and a roll to be parcelled, while keeping one eye on the cake maker. She took the parcel from the salesboy and stood in front of the glass cabin.

He smiled at her again. Feeling encouraged, she asked, "How do you transfer in onto the base?"

He pointed at his long knife and said, "Using this."

"This?! Knife?!"

He wordlessly went back to spreading the chocolate on the cake. She kept standing there.

She had no idea that the salesboy and the cashier were both ogling at her. He didn't like it.

Rubbing of the excess chocolate, he went across the room and came back to the rotating disc with a cardboard base in his hand. He looked at her.

With two careful swipes, he loosened the cake. He looked at her again. He had all her attention.

With one swift motion, he transferred the cake from the disc to the base. He looked at her again. She nodded at him, with a satisfied knowledgeable smile visible only to him. He nodded back.

Clutching the parcel and rummaging among the keys for the right one, she walked back to her moped.

She had just met a friend in a stranger.

Mind

Mind is trapped in myriad actions, some slight and some deep emotions.

A part is entangled is guilt, a part in motivation, a part in regret, a part in greed for some lost lust, a part egotist, a part satisfied with success, a part crushed in shame and humiliation, a part yielding self-pity, a part of hateful contempt and an empty part of solace.

The mind works in deceitful ways. It sends some to temples and makes some break. It makes some altruistic and forces some to its own whim. It addicts some to intoxication and brings some home. It liberates souls and unifies bodies. It lends men their furred brow and women that unending supply of forgiveness in their bosom.

Mind is sometimes scared, and when it is showered the care, the attention and the protection it craves, mind seeks solace in the eyes of its savior.

Mind sometimes is blinded with lust, and when love comes down in violent torrents of passion, it seeks solace in passive submission to the lover.

When the body tires of the wind and the rain and the cold, or the hard lash of the workplace, the mind tires too. Just a cup of hot tea and a warm bed is where it finds its peace.

Mind plays its many acts, in its myriad skins It morphs from a snake's poisonous fang to a butterfly's colourful wing to the fish's useful fin, without provocation or measure. It stores and computes and pukes action, or alternatively inaction, as mind itself may please. It will christen a deed as beneficial or treacherous or naughty of hateful, but it will render the deed the recognition it deserves.

One might wonder about the only thing closest to mind- the concept of God. It makes one question what is God? And what is mind?

Is God a manifestation of mind? Or is mind the creation of God?
Or is it a completely incomprehensive entity from an unknown dimension?

Is mind God, or is God mind? Or is it the one and the same, possessing duality of nature, just as light does? Or is it interconvertible like mass and energy? Is there an Einstein who can give an equation to relation the two?

How long should the mind wander in pursuit of these answers? Is it the God's plan that mind should pursue God, using the mind's unique energy of thinking?

If it all comes to that, why does the mind run after material paraphernalia? To seek solace? Of the mind? To find it's God? By harnessing energy? To obtain material benefit?

" कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन
मा कर्मफलहेतुर्भु मा ते संगोत्स्वकर्मणि " 

School Girl

Still that hope

The restlessness in your eyes

Your beautiful eyes, still naive

Lacking 'the look',

Containing the curiosity,

the wildness, the impatience

of your kind

Your eyes still aren't blemished

with caution

You still can relish everything

Stay like that, little girl

I'm here

to bear your burdens

for as long as I can

I'll carry as much of your load

as my arms permit me to carry

The innocent gleam in your eyes

seems like a panacea 

to my troubled, burdened shoulders

The dancing hope in your eyes

tells me I can still manage

to hide it from you, little one

Stay like that, my dear

Stay hungry, stay foolish

Wisdom has its own weight,
O little one

Bathe in your colours

get lost in that kiddy make-up

But remember to cotton it off

Your cheeks are still pink

like cotton candy

Flushing with joys of novelty

The wind still tickles you,

and entangles your hair

as you jump in that colourful frock

O little one

Make me do your plaits

and make me do your hair

But flash me that smile

flash me those beautiful eyes

and remind me how it was,

Before I started needing make-up

Life's a Minesweeper game

I'm a Minesweeper addict.

Yes, right, Minesweeper.. that Microsoft game which's been in our computers right since we had black and white computers.. The game that literally baffles more than half the computer-knowing population, the very same game that had that smiley at the start, which made faces from :-) to :-o to :'-) to B-)

I guess the B-) came pretty rare.. and :'-) came rather frequently.. and a :-) essentially at every start.

Hasn't anybody noticed the parallelism between Minesweeper and life?

We start almost everything with a smile, when we have actually no idea whatsoever as to how that something might turn up as.

Needless to say, we always start with something small.

You flag your milestones and burn in the mines. You take help of the numbers, ever so colourful, every time telling a newer story.

We smile at something we have no idea about, and dive in it straight. Result? :'-)
And :'-) a rather too many times.

Then finally comes the elusive B-)
First by fluke, then by random guesses, then by calculated moves.
The ratio of :'-) to B-) starts changing.

We then become slightly bold, and choose to seek out for a harder goal, we go for the medium difficulty board.

Our ego fuelled by Intermediate wins is benumbed pretty soon, actually.

Now, you try a little harder. You set your mind to a higher difficulty level.

Practice teaches you and you understand your own gradual progress.
With practice, you become more efficient, more durable in the field.

With some effort, your smiley finally wears sunglasses.

Victory seems a sweet word, after all.

Once again your ratios overturn, your timing improves..

and then you become ready for the bigger challenge.. but in a more humble mindset..
You ready yourself for the bigger step..

You try your hand with your existing knowledge.
You fail. Miserably so.

 Then you improve your technique.

You spend hours rectifying your strategy, your approach to this challenge.

Out of curiosity, you try the earlier easier formats, but they now become too drab for your taste.

You now start getting at this point more and more frequently...

You get back to refining your win/loss ratio, until you reach this point...

(observe above mines carefully)

This is the point, when logic fails to satisfy you in totality.

You try, and retry. And fail with just 1-2 mines left, and no logic proving helpful.
You hate the entry of luck in the most logical game ever.

You try again and again to disprove the factor of luck in logic, but miserably fail to do so. Habit fails to help, logic fails to help and your ratios don't overturn.

Slowly, you learn to accept your luck. Now, with practice, you're already good enough to not fail in logic, so the only variable now is luck, and your win/loss ratio entirely now depends on luck.


Life's similar, people.

We need practice to increase our probability of success, at the same time we need a certain amount of faith in some higher authority (that remains uncovered so far, atleast by our limited logic). The weirdish sixth sense that's lent by this 'faith' variable does a lot good, especially because now you atleast have something to turn to when your logic is all used up. Faith is an emotion, as is the passion for success that drove you the long way. So at the end of the day, you started with a smiley and you dived in, and you ended up with either satisfaction or dissatisfaction.

In other words, all that logic was for your emotions.
A better B-) :: :'-) ratio makes you happy, while a not so good B-) :: :'-) ratio makes you dissatisfied or angry or irritated.

I'm neither glorifying only emotions or only logic here.
I'm suggesting an ideal balance of both.

Because only then can you enjoy to work and work to enjoy.
And be ready for something like this...

Silence

The noisier the road got, the louder I heard your silence

They shout aloud, them vendors,

But your deafening silence prevents me from hearing it

Your words that lined like peas in a pod now seem eaten away by caterpillars

It happens you see..

Drops of rain evaporate

As did your words

I hate to hear

Your bland screeching silence

Your loud screaming silence..

Not talking seems right my dear,

It's right

But talk...

Because I really don't like your silence more than your words..