Magnificent feeling, to a traveled tired soul,
On return to familiar abode.
Enchanted the feeling, in cozy warm hole,
Fleeting the satisfaction, a bare shell, without thy folk.

Where lies solemn solace for a drone,
Amid all nations known,
Not a house to call my own;
Without my beloveds in my home.

Creatures in the dark, fumbling through naked truth
Such emphasis on transient sorrows leaves ties stranded;
Mercurial thoughts can offer no solace, what can soothe ?
A reflection in hindsight vivid, memory branded.

Be water, flow with joy, bend on a whim and a will,
Neither shape nor form, binds frame,
Without color or odor, energy be Nil,
Sannyasi, and an artist did once lay their claim.

Never falters, the darkness of the night,
Pure and cherished, abstaining light.
Artists enrich, absolute spectrums colored
But miss serene beauty in pitch black.

Black, defines purity
Shades change name and emotion.
Undulating thoughts, stationary once
Dissipate into the abyss, from whence it came.

Under blissful stillness in the mountains,
Currents stream decisively, the veins lands yet see;
Nourishing what is, impartial, without a cause,
August setting to teach life lessons.

Beaten down path, the flow downstream,
Doubts remain to tread anew or to follow.
Calm and with purpose, conjoined into mother’s yoke.

Coarse and turbulent, the vivid upstream,
Discloses without bias, doorways supreme.
Sweet the prize, harder still the path.

Twin decisions lie ahead.
Swim against, reach the source,
Remain still, go with the flow.
How decides one?

Watching waves of hordes walking by,
A clarity dawns, suddenly.
The sense of joy, blossoming visages,
Evolved out of once parted tears.

When arrival welcomes the loved,
The parted, embrace the void. A wicked cycle.
The event, absolute,
the twisted coin, relative,
Binds in a mirage, to confound perspectives.

Pressure, inevitable twist of life.
It makes or breaks.
It creates or destroys.
It is my rudra, my karma.

Long addicted towards an unsurmountable feeling of suffocation,
the rising tempo to change the path led in ways undeciphered.
Witness days when strong men fail on chance,
When the grip of indecision rules and brings down,
Kings of unconquered realms to their knees and wonder,
What is character ?

Is it virtue to hold hunger, unquestioned without a cause ?
Is it portrayed when you deal with a physical injury with jest ?
Is it defined when you suffer with failure and recover ?
Is it remaining steady, pulsing heart, never missing a rhythm, when hell descends ?
Or perhaps it is defined by reactions to the 10-ton foot of life,
Without flutter and emotion, to do what needs to be done.

Years in search and guides seemingly abundant, pointless.

Run, toward the frightening chasm of uncertainty,
Cower not, flinch not, when light darkens,
Near lies liberation far from unknown inferno,
Where angels cloaked as demons become friends.

Never seared, heat and pressure adored,
When roti falls to the floor,
Deciphered nay, burnt black the heart
Far from sustenance, food ain’t always about survival.

A draft originated, a tumultuous decade,
thoughts added piecemeal, the requiem grew,
a seed blossomed anew, surreal,
tides of time trimmed a neutron’s half-life.

When the wicked are confounded,
Doomed to flames of woe unbounded,
Call me, with Thy Saints surrounded.
Low I kneel, with heart submission!
See, like ashes my contrition!
Help me in my last condition!

Long awaited, aspiration to write a book fruitless
and lost ‘midst tasks in a whimsical life.
Yearning for knowledge gathered through experiences,
sensations, beyond words, intangible through language.
Here is a ramble on philosophy and thoughts never told.

Here, in another time, beyond material world,
Wisdom dawns bright and darkness scorched,
Ignorance and pride burnt to ashes.
A new day unfolds, mysteries pondered unsolved,
with knowledge of That inadequate,
my comeuppance delivered, without a warning.

Chance, the dice, a sly player,
brings a child blinding aspiration, introduced;
new meaning, average expectation devoid and existence exciting.
Fate presumed plans, molds a survivor,
a seed, science, a new beginning.
Anew started four years of fond memories thus far.

Innocent and ignorant the first fifteen,
knowledge filled the void but ignorance remained the next five;
here stands a Self, after ten more, on path to realization,
aspiring for ethics to unlearn, knowledge gained alike.

A fleeting feeling, life on the cusp,
evolution forced deliberately to destroy the suit;
unconscious the effort, unknowing the consequence before.
The ironic mind develops on its own, independent,
tackling tasks fathomed impervious, in precision
thoughts dared not touched, imperceptible at first.
The weak succumb to illusion and knowledge the true path.

Another effort to bring back the body from the brink
Marathons lay in front, mind endured.
Pain but the weakness leaving the body.
The blackhole still does not fade, like cancer hurts;
Control is but ignorance personified, now realized.
Conquered the distance, thrice, but the longing thrives.

Mutilation of Self, not the intention from the beginning,
Through obsessions fulfilled with transient pleasure.
The mind survives, desire without attachment.
‘Not the philosophy to sacrifice everything, to attain it all ?
This ecstasy of the obsession in the face of affliction
Has but led this life to new heights and body penalized.

Sleeping, thinking, eating, drinking, cooking, running, coding,
All but one more downfall in temporal realization.
Nevertheless, love for addictions transforms, aspiration
And new friends attained thereby. New bridges crossed hence.

Blessed is he, who has found his work;
Let him ask for no other blessedness.
The last eight years, a nuclear engineer dreamed
Realized and fulfilled, a father’s wish.
Long and hard the path traveled, at times cruel;
With friends for guidance and others inspired.

The final work, my karma,
Carried at the end of this and born with it, next.
If cause and effect did change,
Perspectives, opinions, ambition,
Let this work make the difference,
Between my life, death and beyond.

An undying feeling that money, a social trick
Need not bothered but finds its way, wished not,
forced not, desired not.
Difficult times mixed with pleasant, helped
Family and friends when necessary,
Grateful to Thee, never felt abandoned.

Words untold become words lost. For eons.
That shall be, till life becomes dust.
Belief in human nature, capable of the righteous,
And wretched alike, imagined.

Life filled with ironies, a harmony
Created in embrace, far more sublime than senses offer.
In the end, the Brahman stays eternal,
While ignorant half-knowledge bickers, human ethics.
None the better, a nuclear engineer or a carnal maid,
The self replicated, origin and deliverance from ego.
Seven billion possibilities, the vagaries of the mind
To decipher the chaotic fractal of the infinite dimensional Om.

This life, full, fruitful, past regrets,
Meditating on the now, for He sculpted the past and future.
This chaotic living has been beautiful.
The path treaded eventful, extraordinary,
grateful to the family loved, raised me,
to the friends laughed and moved, this soul.
Inadequate, a droplet in an ocean, these words
in gratitude for life enriched, ways rare.
My expectation, reflections in mirror,
spurred lives that changed mine, along right directions.

Final thoughts, quotes flood. A poem apt before told
by Henry Van Dyke, `the Parable of Immortality`.

I am standing upon the seashore.
A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze
and starts for the blue ocean.

She is an object of beauty and strength,
and I stand and watch until at last she hangs
like a speck of white cloud
just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says,
“There she goes!”

Gone where?
Gone from my sight . . . that is all.

She is just as large in mast and hull and spar
as she was when she left my side
and just as able to bear her load of living freight
to the place of destination.

Her diminished size is in me, not in her.

And just at the moment
when someone at my side says,
“There she goes! ”
there are other eyes watching her coming . . .
and other voices ready to take up the glad shout . . .

” Here she comes! “

If we have seen, talked, laughed, drank or loved,
Do not mourn this passing.
Burn away thoughts somber.
Remember me during your best of times, a last request,
For life eternal flows on,
And may the next one be longer,
fulfilling and as memorable as this one…

Since time has turned, and man walked
Necessity drives motive and continually fed,
One thought, oblivious onto infinitum,
Strangely keeps coming around, verbatim.
An appetite unfathomed, only eternal bliss can fill;
All who succumb to demons, shall bring out the divine still.

An audition, brings out character, twisted jest,
Never ceases to startle some, there I said’t.
In sadness we draw strength and defend gay thoughts,
Non intuitive it seems but experience resolves all knots.