It'll be alright..

If no one holds you through the night

Wrap your own arms around you child

squeeze out the loneliness with all your might

And tell yourself it'll be alright ….

When there's no one around to show the way

Look inside you and hear your heart say

Tomorrow will bring a bright new day

And if you believe It'll be okay….



When things don't turn out the way they should

When nothing turns out how you hoped it would

Tell your self you gave it all you could

And tomorrow it'll all be good…

You want to break free, but don’t know how

Pull your head back and your chin above

The light will shine only if you allow

And everything will be okay now….



When you're alone n scared, it's the darkest night

Wrap your arms around you and squeeze dear child

Stare at the stars that shine so bright..

And you'll know, it'll be alright…

Song and dance

A song is but a dance of emotions, dressed up in a costume of sound waves that are vibrating and waltzing. It starts in my mind and ends in yours. Its the mind's dance

A dance is but a melodious symphony of heart beats and footsteps, a song that the heart sings to convey how it feels. The heart's song.

Inner Smile- when the force is strong.

When the force is strong in you, everything is magical. Life becomes like your birthday mornings as a kid, when you woke and walked about in an assured anticipation of the wonderful birthday gifts you would chance upon all day. When you meet your parents first, maybe arranged around your bed room when you opened your eyes so you wait just a few moments to open your eyes after you wake just to prepare your self for something fantastic. Most often there's nothing, the gifts you get at the end of the day were nowhere near your fantasy in numbers and magnificence but nonetheless you sleep with a inner smile because it was the beautiful tingly anticipation of wonderfulness you carried all day at the base of your stomach that was the real present the day had bestowed.

My day is speckled with magical moments that sneak upon me just as a sigh of wonder escapes my soul about the connection that warms me as it glows stronger. The universe is breathing in my being and I sit in its lap. What I feel inside is reflected in everything around me, suddenly songs that verbalize the very same thought, sometimes word to word that is dancing in my mind. Stars shine brighter, strangers smile at you, the weather changes to reflect your moods and you meet the kind of people you would have handpicked to live in your self designed, custom made world.

It reminds you that in nature time exists as moments. Nature doesn't care about seconds and minutes and hours or even days. Nature lives time in moments. It rained this evening, that was a moment. It’s the full moon today that is a moment. There are a lot of emotional moments, and those are the units of natural time, everything in between two moments is a wait, a bittersweet anticipation. Living in the city one gets so hypnotized by keeping track of the seconds, the minutes, the hour and the rest that we don't even notice the moments. We do notice the big ones. Like a first kiss, or a promotion or a lovely meeting. But the smaller more dense ones- the seconds of nature time, that are much more lighter but more frequent.

 The little moments that just blow the idea of the promises of the bigger moments. These beautiful pearls go unnoticed like cheap plastic beads in a noisy mela (fair). It envelops everybody in the city like the pollution that has infiltrated our air so deeply that we have even stopped noticing. The jadedness and grease that covers coat by coat the soft heart of a conscious soul living in a world where the humm of the city with its trucks and zooming cars and blaring television sets completely deafens the tinkling footsteps and the soft knocks of the beautiful moments that make each day. Hearing your thoughts in a random conversation at the table next to you, an auto driver humming the song that you were trying to remember all day, the sweet knowing smiles of complete strangers in a café, the lines in the book you are reading talking about your situation in a psychic sort of way. Jokes you can share with no one but yourself, that inner smile. All goes unnoticed when living in the over-stimulated life in the city. Yet, like cheap crack, it has an evil, masochistic hold on you that you know is killing you but you can't let it go.

It breathes in you

The breath of life

Dances with you

Notes and light

You open your eyes

In innocent wonder

And a glowing smile

As you say surrender

And raise your arms high

And if right now was time to die

You'd do it without a sigh.

Day 2 in kasol, the home of malana cream, Manali.

It all seems so simple, when one wakes up in wooden cabin with windows all around, opening your eyes first time in the morning to fully drawn curtains. This would normally irritate me in the city, but when the first glimpse of the morning is the earth in full glory, tall pine trees framing one of the highest spots in the world, snow colored and blanketed in clouds instead of the ugly box buildings clouded in city smog, one can only burst into an inner smile. In Kasol the sun does not slap u wake you awake and yell at you to get ready- the race starts in 15 minutes, rather it kisses you gently on the eyelids and then stand with open arms inviting you to its warm embrace. It is not a feeling of awe that natures' architecture inspires in you, unlike the architects of urban wonder cities, rather a sense of deep comfort and belonging like you are where you were meant to be.

It should be a simple choice to make, just saying bye-bye to the pretentious, unnecessarily complicated city life, get out of the race and back to life. Why then does one not make that choice? There is a sense of hesitation, pulling me back and I don’t know what it is. Could it be the "impossible dream" that was sneakily woven into the DNA of all us city dwellers, while being born in the swanky city hospitals? Like a magnetic chip that doesn’t let you get away? I think I've heard of something like that pet owners use to make sure their pets do not wander too far astray.

Going for a walk to Chalal (a small riverside village near Kasol, Manali)…come back and update…

I'm back and it was an easy, beautiful riverside, pine covered walk to a village called Chalal that’s across the river from Kasol. It’s a good walk for acclimatization, the kind that just warms up your lungs and muscles for the longer walks to Rashol, Malana or Tosh you will make if you're here for a bit. But for me it was more than that. I had to go and see some people I met in December, when I just came for a few days to meet my lovely friend Ankur (whom I visited a while ago while he did his 7 month stint at living here in the mountains). After his return to the city he missed all the friends he had made here and told me to go say hello from him. So on my walk I'm thinking about the last time I walked that path, crossed the wobbly wooden bridge, saw that house with a dog was just 3 months ago but it was so different. Winters freeze everything for me, Although I like the sense of feeling cold as compared to that of the terrible heat the rest of the year, there is something about cold that shrinks me up from inside. For this reason I always assumed I would love the sea more, and so never really travelled very often to the mountains. This experience however, changes everything. Life couldn't be simpler than what we see here without getting monotonous, and life just couldn't get more beautiful than this without getting plastic.

So in these thoughts I walked and saw the signboard of the place I was supposed to meet Noam, who left before me and had a friend who ran this café. A beautiful halt…a shanti chillum with some nice masala chai and perfect sunlight on my face. Anyway after this it was a shock that jolted me out of the beautiful daze I was drifting in, by a glimpse of foolish ugliness that I realized has also infected these lovely mountain dwelling locals, the city is reaching for them. One minute I felt like I truly could belong here, and the second it made me an alien. The brilliant company blunted the jolt though and some real conversation over chai, food, joints on the walk back made it a lovely day in a very satisfying way. Its not even over, the evening awaits, nothing to do but watch some TV, breathe in the fresh air, smoke some joints and explore the realms of one's own mind and of each other.

day 1 in Kasol, the weed covered mountains of Manali

Such a beautiful moment that never occurred before but had always lingered in your mind as a tingling possibility. A feeling you knew must exist but never felt just bursts upon you like an unexpected water balloon in the hot summer days preceding the monsoon in delhi, and all you can say……is……nothing…..

Aaah perfection is a feeling and not quality, and like a lot of things it can only be felt and not explained.

Mind games ( that I play with my self)

Hazy shadows haunt
Refuse to take form
They linger and they taunt
And defy all norms

Reality shatters into
Countless tiny beads
Future comes to view
As minute sprouting seeds

Clarity incessantly evades
A game of hide and seek
Only confusion pervades
An overpowering reek

I meet me on the rainbow
Walking upside down
Its colours ooze and flow
Like the tears of a clown

I struggle to keep pace
With this untameable mind
Sweat lining my face
I always fall behind..

A parting kiss.

God's Debris, floating in space

passing comets, an aura shared

Perpetual waiting for the unprepared

But real life seldom compares

while imagination constantly dares

And the mind just warningly glares



And when its time, time evaporates

We peep into our mind gates

and percipience rudely states

But the heart incessantly debates

Of chances and risks, destiny and fates.

While the mind sublimates, the soul elevates.



Your hands whisper in my ear

So far away, but it seems so near.

and there goes a solitary tear

eternal search endless fear.

a mind so complex,words so sheer.



And when its time to depart

A little piece of my heart

I'll leave in a corner under your bed

but make mine whole with yours instead

A parting kiss, a drifting caress

And unspoken words, I could not express

An eternal prayer, a constant wish

for smiles and grins and unceasing bliss.