The Mind's Endless Mirror

Identity

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:34:00 +0000

I look beyond the silence
behind the cold glass
beyond the shores of light
feigning a dream so far

I am lost in the wild
this lit up concrete night
everything seems like dust
a misdemeanor of a hopeless mind

In a little while
my boxed life breaks
the walls stunned down
in a heartless gaze

The questions of existence
fog this empty heart
under the ugly mist
my road ahead seems dark

At length I realize
the attempt at a sane life
is a futile thought
of a fading light

I look at my reflection
my shadow's unreal
this is not my mind
this is not me

Two sides

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:16:00 +0000

What if this is all there is?

What if the ways ahead are darker than the ways now?

What if it hurts more than it heals?

What if it life is worse than death?

What if the climb is not worth the mountain top?

What if the ocean is worse than the river's icy start?

What if we drink up a glass half empty?

***

What if there is always more?

What if sun shines brighter ahead?

What if the heal is worth the hurt?

What if death is worth the life?

What if the mountain top were the top of the world?

What if the ocean were full of endless beauty?

What if the glass were forever half full,

only we always saw it half empty?

What if I'd smile

hoping for tears someday?

What if I'd cry now

and hope for a sunny place somewhere?

What if a heart that breaks

wishes never to fail again?

What if love that went away

decides never to walk your way?

What if.....

My Morning Star

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 13:37:00 +0000

I wished for you

in a morning star

beneath the ocean floor

like a distant dream

You looked back a while

and lost me in a haze

and we moved on

leaving behind teary eyed screams

We walked the maze

leaving footprints on the sand

You remained my morning star

my wish my distant dream

when the waves of sorrow

engulfed my wounded soul

I drowned in the ocean floor

yet you heard my muffled screams

Now out in the early sun

you hold my hand

and walk me out on the beach

my faded faith's new found gleam

The storm's run out

seas of faith on our side

we now look back

and our fear is now the distant dream

The Chair

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 10:30:00 +0000

I have seen kings fall

knights gone cold

I have seen evil

in both the young and old

Days when blood and sweat

and the stench of death

were too much to bear

for those who saw their last breath

I have seen the ones

with murderous rage

begging for mercy

at the pearly gates

I have seen those

who made peace

tried their own sins

and took death with ease

But what they know not

is what lies in wait

they think they rest in peace

with souls unafraid

I see things they don't

I see him standing there

All those who come to me

are damned to the reaper's lair

P.S: Photograph by jithinrk :)

Cracks in the Mirror

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:16:00 +0000

It stares right back

this empty face

like a train dead on its tracks

or a barren horse race

The punishment is written

the scroll is ready

under the sins undone

my head feels heavy

The shackles don't hurt no more

like I always belong here

but there are shadows at the edge of the doors

inside my mirror away from here

Death isn't far away

a day, a month, it's all the same

someone always has to pay

for an evil end to a deadly game

It's the last word

the mirror has seen the end

the face, it speaks in a voice unheard

it says, "I am innocent."

In Victus

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:04:00 +0000

Out of the days that unearth me,
Bright and white from pole to pole,
I curse whatever gods may be
For my gullible soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have winced, I have cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody and bowed.

Beyond this place of skies so clear
Looms but the Horror of the jade,
And yet the so-called joy of the years
Finds and shall forever find me afraid.

It matters not how the gate is built,
How empty is my punishment scroll,
I am a slave to my guilt:
I am lost to my soul.

P.S: The true rendition of the William Ernest Henley Poem "Invictus"

Dream Box

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 19:25:00 +0000

In my box

I live in a dream

Where no one can see

Or even pass on a scream

I think of the crime

Of a broken heart

In that box

I leave my soul apart

At length I open my eyes

And see my dreams have stayed

In my joy and grace

My deepest desires lay displaced

My story remains untold

A consequent of a dreamt death

I lay bare in those arms

Waiting sometimes for a last breath

What happens when the box is gone

And so are stories of past

What happens when my dream box has left

And its only sorrow that lasts?

Miss Sunflower Blue

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 07:25:00 +0000

I don't think about you

I'm sunflower blue

I dream of a voice

an evening breeze

whispering in my ears

singing me to sleep

I don't think about you

I'm sunflower blue

You don't haunt me

in my hazy memories

you don't follow sunset

in a midnight's dream

I don't think about you

I'm sunflower blue

You aren't etched deep

in the depths of my soul

I don't get lost without you

and wonder where to go

I don't think about you

I'm sunflower blue

To Johnny Cash

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:38:00 +0000

He came from Arkansas
with a depth of heart
he sang the blues
of souls torn apart

The empire of dirt
the Ring of Fire
all from the pieces of small faith
and the endless desires

He was happy for the world
but let it pass him by
and yet in his sorrow
he made me cry

Fell in love with June
lived and loved for years
and yet from deep within his favorite gods
he shed Apache Tears

depths of darkness beckon tonight
As I hear him far away
And when he finally walks the line
I reckon Everybody's Fine

I miss him in the bars
the Folsom Prison too
and then I sigh with a smile
when I talk to a Boy Named Sue :)

Save me the Waltz

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:03:00 +0000

You see through me

this empty sheath of life

I see my demons

waiting for my knife

I will tire you out

with my mind's haze

I will be the non-beauty

of your poise and grace

At length the shadows catch up

alone in my room I fail the fall

How will you ever hold on?

How will you Save the Waltz?

P.S: Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald were once the golden couple in Paris. Zelda's erratic behaviour and bouts of schizophrenia caused her to get institutionalized a number of times. I have always wondered what it must have been like. Have been trying to find her memoirs "Save me the Waltz" haven't found it anywhere so far. This one was a thought that passed me by.

Purple Haze

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 09:10:00 +0000

My wounds feel wrong

my joy in a haze

is this just a season

a passing pretty phase?

Does the mind know what it feels

does it feel truly safe

does it yearn for solitude or

its people that it craves

Is my glass half empty

or the plate half full

Is it just the dim lights

or my life's sweet lull

The door awaits

a faint knock

as it turns midnight

on a stopped clock

Will I live the other day

just to die in a smile

or will I stay here in the purple haze

will I stay here a while?

2011

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:57:00 +0000

Of fleeting joys
and stagnant sorrows
this has been an year
of hopeful tomorrows

An year when I lost
my soul's remembrance
a year of death and love
and a peaceful embrace

An year that marked a journey
a chapter in a lowly life
an year that helped my veins
walk away from the friendly knife

An year of me finding faith
in a vulnerable laugh
an year when sometimes
I even dreamt of my own epitaph

An year that brought with it
some great new friends
an year that remembered with a sigh
the untimely ends

I would look back and smile perhaps
or would it be tears tonight
for I bid goodbye to an year
that helped me open up to light....

Merry Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 11:17:00 +0000

It was a mute prayer

in the world of a god I know not

It is the lazy silence

that the beautiful day after brought

Last Christmas you wished for a soul

A way to go, a place to hide

A way to take away the sorrows

of taking failure in a stride

There were secrets last Christmas

best kept in joy

there were gifts from secret santas

beautiful heartfelt toys

This Christmas a new wish beckons

a new beautiful truth welcomes you

For on this year's Christmas

Your Secret Santa...is You :)

On The Road...

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:18:00 +0000

The Times are changing

So are we

In a phone call that never came

We became all that we could be

You walk past these gates

A man with a dream

And yet the beautiful tides that await

Undo your lost screams

You left something unsaid

When you walked out of the door

You wish you had turned back

And embraced the memories some more

On the road around the world

There will come a moment of truth

When you’ll remember the laughter

And all that you had wanted to do

But moonlit night would let you know

Even when you left home

You never left the memories

You’re never truly alone…

The letters never sent, were always read

The words unsaid, were always heard

That phone call you missed

was always remembered

God's own country?

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:54:00 +0000

Harigovindan is a Paudwal, no he has no relation to the famed bollywood singer, he, rather belongs to a caste of drummers and is featured in last Sunday’s episode of the Dewarists. I have never seen or heard his music but I know of his instrument, the Edakka, a beautiful percussion instrument from Kerala that the West and even our own country knows little about.

Edakka: Drums with emotions

What is important is however, how close my own family’s story is to Hari’s. Welcome to the picturesque God’s own country, only the dark truths is so far away from fiction that to a typical Keralite born and brought up outside, who spent her summer months trying to understand the mystical land of her forefathers, the fiction sometimes breaks down into harsh realities.

I was born into the more privileged parts of the ancient Kerala caste system, we are the Kshatriya equivalent of the Vedic culture. But the Dravidian system, more ancient than the Aryan one, was one of matriarchal societies. Now to most of the women I have met in my lifetime, this brought a huge amount of respect, but people do not realize how strict the real system was. Brahmins built the matriarchal society essentially to keep a lot of wives from other castes like mistresses and essentially not give their children the same right a true Brahmin child got. Thus, thanks to a crazy social system my father (a Kshatriya) couldn’t be present for his own father’s funeral.

The matriarchal system is the white washed face of a state with the highest cases of domestic violence reported in the country. It is the irony in a state that boasts of literacy and lacks education.

Hari’s story is similar; he attempted to sing his music at the Angadipuram temple and wasn’t allowed to because it was meant for a higher caste of musicians. Those who believe the caste system is dead and gone only need a brief visit to Guruvayoor, where the family of the Samarinds (Cochin’s royal family) is given special entry privileges or even at the temple in my village where we view the annual festivities on a raised platform and the rest of the “common” village is on the ground.

The punishments of our ancient history eventually caught up with us, with reservations and hard work helping the lower castes achieve so much more than our families. Nowadays, all movies and serials show Thampurans (our caste) as the big bad wolves of the caste system. Little do people know that it was a system of tyranny and ours was but one small part in the century old traditional systems.

Hari went on to build a temple for his father’s Edakka, world’s only temple dedicated to percussion instruments, no labourers came forth to build as it was against the caste system, no government funding as he isn’t exactly a “backward caste”. This is the current state in “God’s own country”, god left the country long time ago when a son was shunned from lighting his own father’s funeral pyre.

This week's Dewarists Episode:

To my mind's endless mirror

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 08:01:00 +0000

My empty paper

Loves the sight

Of a wordless poet’s

Lost plight

The pages of void

That come crashing by

Like a soulful river

Run sadly dry

At length my hundred letters beckon

The hundred thoughts of solitude

It writes itself my unsung diary

My unlearned fortitude

My life’s diary

My best friend

My constant source of pain

My dreams of an end

You live on in an empty cloud

Fly away to unknown eyes

And as I put this to print today

You rescue me a hundredth time

Eat. Pray. Love.

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 19:25:00 +0000

This is not a review, but just an observation. I was watching Eat Pray Love (which is a great watch until you realize Indians NEVER take an year off). But what I noticed most obviously as Indians always do, is how the west perceives us. And the movie and the book is perhaps the best representation of the country’s spirit I have seen or read in the recent times. For a person from the west, and I intend no racism here, it must seem like this land of loud noises and chaos. I remember someone being told by a German, how they just do not honk in their country. I suppose even the exchange students from Europe must find us unimaginably loud!

Having never really traveled abroad, I have nothing really to compare my country with. But this I find to be true. We are in our own world so chaotic that we manage to find some lame sense of joy in our chaos. We laugh at a lot sillier things than most people foreign to this country do, and for the most part we just laugh because inherently we all seek joy and never really lose track of what we are seeking.

I look at the lack of political stability or the rising prices and the frustration of the people and wonder when a class struggle would break out in our world but the truth is it won’t. Even the poor and the desperately hungry smile in India, and I wonder why is it that they do so with nothing in their hands, no agenda for the day, no dreams, except to just last the night.

We might not take year long trips to a guru or a medicine man in Bali, but we find our true selves in a different way. We all have our moments of silence even at the edge of chaos. We find peace in crowded trains of Mumbai, and are just as loud in our spirituality. As I write this, the temple in my campus tolls its bells to remind us of some sense of conscience, the mosque not too far away reminds people to finish their five prayers of the day and somewhere on a Sunday church, the priest says the same things in three different languages for people to understand.Understand what I wonder?

God is important to us; even the atheists in India believe in the lack of him and thus, religiously, avoid temples and churches. We are called secular for a reason, a majority of us believe in the existence of different paths to god, we just sometimes think the path we take is more important than someone else’s.

We are proud because sometimes we welcome ruin. “Ruin is good” says Elizabeth Gilbert in the book. It helps you transform and that’s what we have done, for centuries even before the west found us. We transformed and each of us takes deep pride in the history they are a part of. We don’t need an year round trip, we eat, we pray, we love, all in the same country.

From the Beauty to the Beast

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 19:03:00 +0000

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

In secret, between the shadow and the soul” – Pablo Neruda

You lay hidden in my heart’s loneliness

Afraid of letting my demons go

I love you for your kindness

And your wounded spirit

I know it lies beneath your cold gaze

Our Love’s perpetual minute

They will hate you for the life you live

For your unforgivable rage

But to me you’d be a realization

Like blessings to a sage

I hate it that it aches my heart

To see you weak and sad

That I want to stand up against

A world that calls you mad

At length the world will see what I saw

And with your heart unbroken

And the love’s dark shadows

Will now beckon a glorious sun

Breakable

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 20:13:00 +0000

A heart made of glass,

A soul of stone

Is so breakable

And just as alone

Ever thought what keeps us together?

That which falls apart

That which gives us laughs

And brings tears to our hearts?

Am I the strength of the times,

Or merely pain’s vulnerable friend?

Am I to be broken

And meet my likeliest end?

I’d rather be broken

and mend a torn soul

I’d rather fail

Would rather rise after a fall

Seasons of my mind

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 20:03:00 +0000

Aching an unknown ache

Or embracing a silence

My mind is like a season

Of brevity and transience

Joy is fleeting

Love divine

I cry and laugh together

I blame my mind

In the search of my weary soul

I have lived and laughed aloud

But at the edges of the night

I keep seeing my dark shroud

My mind is a season

A season of joy and sorrow

And with every happy thought today

I wait for a grim tomorrow

It sometimes feels like the sun

Or a rain of pain

The joy comes unamused

And I pray it comes again

I know not what lies ahead

Happiness or sorrow

I know it’d be a season nonetheless

Here today, gone tomorrow

Annabel Lee

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 04:11:00 +0000

I wish I were Annabel Lee
a Romeo's Juliet, a love's lost glee

A beauty known to one
a harrowed reverie,
dream of sighs
I wish I were Annabel Lee

I wish I were Annabel Lee
lost in the ocean and the deep seas

Pygmalion's Galatea,
lifeless to all but him
I wish I were
a poet's empty whim

I wish I were Annabel Lee
Alive and dead, both I would be

A tortured muse
to Vincent Van Gogh
I wish I were
an artist's window to the world

I wish I were Annabel Lee
frozen in time forever free

Forgotten in paint
unforged in ink
I wish I were the grace
that makes an empty void
break down and think

I wish I were Annabel Lee
the source of all joy and misery

Beauty beyond belief
keeper to the gates of hell
I wish I were a story
a story only one could tell

An Ophelian dream
Poe's muse in a kingdom by the sea
I wish I were Annabel Lee....

A rooted life

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 11:44:00 +0000

I have stayed

many years

branches on branches

living through many tears

the wind walks past

like an old friend

passing along

softly before the end

I was home

to a lost family

of canaries and sparrows

of squirrels and bees

They laughed with me

cried their pain

flew far wide

before coming home again

All the chirpy evenings

the secret joys

of secret meetings

they passed me by

At length there came a time

my strength wore down

a fearless victim

of a woodcutter's cold frown

He struck long and hard

crying tears of rage

this was my final stand

my life's last stage

even as I fall

I fall with a smile

for I'd live on as warmth

of a winter night's pyre

Remembrance: Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 01:17:00 +0000

More than a year since my grandmother has passed. I saw her in my dreams today. As distinctly as ever, sitting in front of a temple getting ready for prayers, she just told me not to be afraid of the snakes and continued to set up for her prayers in a field surrounded by snakes! Now, I am no Freudian expert but in my head this probably means a good thing.

I miss her existence; she was all I knew of spirituality, of God, of Evil and good. She was there like a constance whenever I felt alone. The reason I hold on to her so dearly is because, she is the only loss I have ever known, the only heartache, the only real sorrow.

Her last years, my father had spent preparing me for the grief but came to realize he himself wasn’t really ready to let her go. I feel guilty about not having gone for her funeral, but I did not really know what to do for the most part that day. Should I have mourned her? Or gone as I did for some irrelevant college function and cheer our band unnecessarily? Which brings me to the real question; how does one mourn a loss? For a first time mourner, this wouldn’t come naturally or it could just be my lack of emotion (or too much of it!) that I am not able to articulate the sense of loss I feel.

She was my one my all

My pillar that stood tall

She graced through the brazen storm

Like a cloud in a peaceful calm

She was my rendition of a fairy tale

Lived to see a family that prevailed

She was beauty in my eyes

Alive in death’s lullaby

She comes in my dreams

like a happy solace

she smiles through

our eternal embrace

Reread the tribute I wrote for her and realized that no words are really enough for me to let her go. There will no closure, she is never coming back and there is merely a void full of memories to remember her by.

An Eagle's Ire

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 18:52:00 +0000

My anger is broken

My love atrocious

an irony of nature

my beauty is distorted

I soar the skies in misery

Looking for an innocent prey

until I see a lonely speck

nature has not made my day

They call me glorious

and worship my might

"The patron of Zeus

and Vishnu's flight!"

I have flown across

rivers of blood

scavanged for food

across the floods

I hunt for kings

wait for the baited

But die lonely

forever hated

When the skies come down

the earth comes near

the dust settles down

and the mist is clear

You feel the fear

of the deathly scars

for beauty is beautiful

only from far

Waterbone: Tibet - The lost story of a journey

noreply@blogger.com (Swati Thampan) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 08:01:00 +0000

You can only be called a true LISTENER of music if you have the ability to respect music made from the unlikeliest of sounds. My first tryst with Waterbone was a cassette bought by my father at an attempt to find Indian sounds in America. He had gone almost sentimentally collecting remotely Indian sounding albums from the American Music Stores and came back to India triumphant of having found mystic chants in this band's debut album.

For me Tibet was more than that, it was a window to this mysterious land that has been fighting its existence for decades. It was a sound that transports you to the Himalayas. It was real because the artists had in fact traveled to these lands and recorded with Tibetan artists. It was not like the typical Enigma album (no disrespect to the artist), it didn't have the technology of recorded voices. What it did contain was the voice of a people finding peace in spite of the turmoil around them.

Jimmy Waldo, one of the members of the group, one of the founding members of an '83 hard rock group Alcatraz, has been a rocker throughout his life. The album is a testament to respected hard rockers like Robert Plant because they choose to tread paths untread by those before them, he chose to change his genre purely in his quest for something that touches his soul.

Tibet is more than just a trance, electronic, lounge album, it's the voice of a forgotten land, the chant of peace and hope for a place that has forgotten it under ages of oppression.

But the song that started it all, the one that led my father's thought to this album is this one song that takes you right at the foothills of Himalayas on a spiritual journey. Presenting to you, the "Song For the Mountain"