Silence

The sun shines,
The seconds strike,
The silica spies
A sylvan stance,
As I sip my swirls
On my silent seat

Surrendering
To my screaming soul,
While I seek
The soul of Silence,
For some significance
In solitary stupor

Surreal moments
When the lips don't split,
Are silently seeping,
Soaking the heart,
In this surfing sojourn

Bravery, thy name is Babycakes!!!

Today wasn’t just another fairy tale; it was a little more than that. Today a princess just refused to let the dragon carry her away…..

Two months back a dear friend of mine, Babycakes (both of us call each other by that name for the last five plus years since I have known her) was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma, a kind of cancer. The first thing she told me after breaking the news of her sickness was, ‘it’s really not a big deal, stay off of Google’. If that sounds fearless, read on.

She just started chemotherapy to ‘zap it out’ as she puts it, and while it was not possible to prevent her hair from falling off, she wanted to do it on her terms. She took it all off today in a celebratory event.

As I parked my car in one of the back roads near Kenneth Square, and headed uphill to the venue, I walked through a sidewalk sandwiched with flowers on both sides. When I reached the venue for the event, Flickerwood Wine Cellars, she was there, dressed in a beautiful grey dress and a pinkish yarn-dyed coat with the ultimate piece of chunky jewelry, looking like every bit the celebrity in her own right.

Big hugs and a few fun pictures later, she took her seat on a tall bar-stool and sipped a frozen Margarita as the hair dresser started taking her hair off. Wait! It doesn’t end there – she did it in stages – this time it was a fun Mohawk, and guess what, even though she wasn’t buying our words ( especially the ‘you look like Justin Bieber’ compliment), she looked even cooler….nah…Hotter!!!

She took a break and consoled someone who was getting emotional, socialized a little more and took more pictures before taking it all off in the next round. Her two young children were standing side by side, trying to fight back tears through smiles and hugging each other intermittently. Her mom was throwing compliments about how whether she liked it or not, she looked great. I’ve always thought that she had the most vivaciously animated face that I have seen, and taking the hair off only took it to an even higher superlative by increasing focus on it.

I left soon after and as I walked downhill through the same road, I couldn’t see the flowers anymore since it was dark. But I knew that they were there, I could feel them. It was only a matter of the sun rising again to see them. And the sun would definitely rise again

….and she will live happily ever after!

Black or White - It don't matter!!!

I have been reading a little bit of Sufi poetry for some time now. This is a poem in Saraiki (a dialect of Punjabi) composed by a great Sufi Poet Hazrat Khwaja Ghulam Farid. I made a very humble attempt to translate it in its essence, so my friends could feel its beauty too.

“Kis wal akheya wey Majnu nu,
O teri Laila disdi kaali Ve
Majnu ney jawaab ditta,
O teri akh na dekhan wali

Je tu dekhen meri akh naal
Teri surat na jaaye sambhaali Ve

Ved vi chitte te Quran vi chitti,
Vich siyahi rakh ditti kaali Ve
Ghulam Farid jitthe akhiyaan lagiyaan,
Otthe kya gori kya kaali Ve!”

Translation:

‘Oh Majnu, what’s wrong with your sight

Your Laila looks as dark as the night’

- When someone said with spite

He said:

- Let me shed some light

With my eyes, when you see,

She’s a form of divine beauty

The Vedas are white, the Quran is white,

It’s the black ink that makes them shine bright, 

Ghulam Farid says -when you love someone,

It don’t matter if you’re black or white

Happy Friendship Day!!!