This is a true story, not inspirational...

I do not mean to inspire people who read this, but I do hope it tingles your brain cells and revives the humanity that gets lost in the undercurrents of work and toil.

May the power of love and truth be with you. (Gosh I sound like a messiah :D)

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The only credential Mumbai has ever asked of its people is the boldness to dream. For those who do, it unlocks its gates and its treasures, not caring who they are, or where they come from. I have lived in this city of dreams for over fifteen years, and until last year, I believed in the magical nature of Mumbai. But having now realized the futility of my beliefs, I know that half the misery caused in Mumbai is due to ignorance, while the other half is due to knowledge.
There was nothing exceptional about that Thursday. I was being dropped to my friend’s place by our driver, as the sunny sky and grey clouds loomed above us. Mumbai traffic is utter pandemonium. There is no ordered system of traffic signals, and hardly any zebra crossings. Being able to cross the junction between the suburb and the main city is a huge feat in itself, especially if you are in a car, like we were. As usual, we were waiting for the signal to turn green, and I noticed a motorcycle crossing the road. My eyes followed, and to my absolute horror, a truck, coming from the wrong end of the road drove right into the motorbike. After a second or two, the truck backed, and went over the edge of the motorbike again, almost crushing the two people whom I could see lying in their pool of blood.
The sheer horror of what I had just witnessed made my blood chill. I wanted to scream, run out and help those two men, yet I couldn’t. It felt as though my body was no longer in control of my brain, and that despite the fact that minutes were passing by and no one was getting out of their vehicles, I sat there, tears rolling down my shut eyes, clenching my fists as I tried to push away from the awful and sickening sight that lay in front of me. I knew in my heart that the wounded would be taken care of. So I opened my eyes, thinking they would be gone, but to my shock, there they lay, dead or alive, I didn’t know.
That’s when the wall of my belief and reality crashed down upon me. Wasting no more time, I got out of the car, ran to the two bodies, called the ambulance and took them to the nearest hospital. After hours of diagnostic tests and immense numbers of blood transfusions, one of them survived. Ryan has brain hemorrhage, and with each passing day, his ability to reason, think, distinguish faces is diminishing. Amit died in the hospital a few days after the accident. Both had been studying mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai.
Ryan’s parents call me up often, telling me his progress. I feel good thinking that one day he might lead the normal, simple life he had been before the appalling episode. Whenever I go back to Mumbai for my summer and winter holidays, I make it a point to meet him, and spend some time talking to him about inanimate things, just to lighten up his mood. But this affair has opened the blindfold that I had put over my eyes regarding Mumbai and its love for people. A city is nothing without its people. Without you and me. Everything is subjective compared to that fact. I realized that day, when I took Ryan and Amit to the hospital that so many of us live such facile lives because we haven’t been able to remedy ourselves from believing that other’s lives are not interconnected to ours. Before dreaming of becoming complete human beings, we need to stop this despicable indifference people have towards individuals. I can no longer ignore the fact that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Through this incident, the perspective with which I’ve started looking at my city has made me feel like I’m rediscovering Mumbai all over again. It seems as if we have lost ourselves in this huge world, which is why our reaction to people’s miseries is so limited. But because the soul has such deep roots in personal and social life and its values runs so contrary to modern concerns, caring for the souls around us, like Ryan’s, might just be the most rational choice we make.

ONE LIFE TO LIVE
We have one life to live.
One breath to take, one laugh to make,
There’s glory in every aspect of human nature.
We have the tools to create a world full of love, joy and fulfillment.

But sometimes life takes us away from those we have loved more than ourselves
And it hurts. We act like nothing does; deep down, it breaks you.
Then suddenly, someone enters your life, filling it with so much more than you had ever expected to receive
And those breaths, those tingling sensations in your stomach, the laughter you’d forgotten, reappear.

The journey from the womb to the tomb is never over till you realize the potential life holds for you.
Waste it, and it’ll disappear, like the mist in the morning hue.
Love like there’s no way to relieve yourself of love.
Dream, aspire, learn, for the good it will do to people who own not the resources you have.

Build, carve, engrave ideas into children you see. Teach them what loving taught you.
Tomorrow those same children will lead the world. Create harmony.
Visualize. Integrate. Perceive. Two hands taught you to walk. Millions can initiate love revolution.

Love- you have nothing else that will last.
If only I had the ability to go back and change things, I would. Yet, there’s 28000 days for me to change it still.
See the sky, the blue is beckoning you. The water droplets are purging.
Run. You’ll hear the wind laugh as you leap forward.

Our planet alone has death. I have to acknowledge that the sea is a cup of death and the land is stained altar stone.
But Jesus, when you don't have any money, the problem is food. When you have money, it's sex. When you have both it's health... If everything is simply jake then you're frightened of death. Come on…I don't care how long I live. Over this I have no control, but I do care about what kind of life I live, and I can control this. I may not live but another five minutes but it will be five minutes definitely on my terms. I do not cut my life up into days but my days into lives, each day, each hour, an entire life.
If I can find salvation in this drama that is life, so be it.

A DAY OF ETERNAL HEALING.

The wind is blowing from the west
Entering the room, filling the unpurged air,
With a sense of belief and adventure
As I open the next chapter, of Zumdahl, the great dictator.

No one knows why we learn,
The matter, molecules, and hybridization,
Of electrons that zoom across the world with rapt perfectness
When we can’t even rout the megalomaniac Heisenberg’s principle.

I’m not complaining- it’s been an eventful weekend
But after saturation point, rolling over and dying
Seems like a rational choice to make
Especially when the AP happens to be tomorrow.

Perhaps a chance encounter with a mental system
Inside my little brain will occur
Allowing more penetration of neutralization reactions
And dear old Le Chatelier’s wise words.

But for now,
I’m the electron, the acid, the precipitate
Of the world’s mysterious ways
Working my way through Chemistry- the world’s BIGGEST mistake that ever was cooked by Rice.

AFTERWORD:

Zumdahl- name of the ghastly book

Rice- name of my teacher. (James Rice)

The poem above was written while I was procrastinating the day before my Chemistry Exam of Grade 12. It is normal for me to hate studying the day before any exam, but this time I went one step further and wrote my "love" for chemistry at that point in time.
I actually like Chemistry, except the times when our teacher acted like a prick (something that happened almost every other day?)
This is my love and regards to the AP Chemistry Curriculum for the first and last time.
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An Affair With the Moon

AN AFFAIR WITH THE MOON

The moon shone on my face
Maddening purple hue spread across the sky
There he was, sitting, in a daze
Consumed by the life gone by.

I knew he could not see me
For his mind was captured by the sins of his like
One could see the tears glitter in the moonlight
I saw, my heart throbbed, painfully, awhile.

There lay a body on the ground
Drenched in red, the white garb glistened,
My body shuddered as he moved his fingers, around
Encircling the paleness of the beauty’s features.

After a moan, a cry, a smile arose on the bloodsucker
There seemed to be no voice in me, but as I stepped back
He set his eyes on me, and I moved not an inch
For the grandeur that countenance had, none could ever match.

The glowing skin, the enigma of his evil
Bound me, as he trampled the grass to reach me
My hand moved, and pricked, the silent ooze of crimson
The finger had touched a fateful thorn.

Those eyes! I could not look into them
For they bore into me, with neither vexation nor appeasement
But a simple look of overpowering honesty,
And Calmness that could kill.

Oh! The feel of one absolutely powerless!
A moment later, a scream evolved
There I lay, covered in sweat and tears
It was an affair with the moon, the sky under which I had slept.

Escape

ESCAPE

Let the blood of destruction be cemented on the wall

Let the fire that burns remain in the cave
For we need to see what truly made us mad
So we can dispose off the naturally obsolete.

I am not the angel from heaven
Nor the evil from the womb
I am a simple man, an ordinary man
Learning from move to move.

The viciousness of mankind
The depressed mind of mine
Is embedded like worms in my skin
Perpetually hindering my life.

I’m bleeding from the momentous pleasure of pain
That cumulates into demonic sins
I lie upon the convent of God
Drying the red blood from the shin.

For the gun fired into the soul
And killed the body of that beautiful sister
They dragged her away from the few men old
Ruining a life that was young and bold.

I cried for her return
I screamed for her pain
But the old man said
‘What is lost, will never be gained’

What made me do next
Will never be addressed
The silence has wavered the results
My hands are wet with the General Morgan’s sweat.

I plunged the knife into his heart
And enjoyed that moment of pure despise
He tried to remove his gun to part
But in the end, revenge sufficed.

Those whom I loved
Left me in the madness of the world
I knew there were means to escape
But what would I escape for?

So I left the country of eternal doom
Walking the way from the land to the sea
The photograph lay in my hand
With faces hardly visible to see.

I was far too weak to walk anymore
And farther ahead there was an oak made door
A lamp shone outside the house
Bringing light within the spirited dark.

Thus my feet managed to tramp the grass
For the lingering pain seemed numb after the end
I had lived twenty four years learning to walk


Now was the time to put it to the test.

The light was stronger now
And I could see the window sill
It reminded me of the night
When she last laughed so shrill.

I knocked the door three times
Each time with new inspiration
There was a moment’s pause
A moonlit face saw my desperation.

‘Who may you be?’ she puzzled over me
My appearance was scary enough
For I had no shoes and my torso
Was streaming with his and my blood.

‘A man, a warrior am I’ said I
‘Having faced death all through my travel
A little bread is all I need
Else the devil shall take my soul away’

She smiled at my hopelessness
And opened the door a bit more
She led me to the dining hall
And made me sit, nice and tall.

‘Now now, you are red
By the blood of all those good men
But it isn’t your fault they shed
I see the fear, within your eyes instead.’

I ate an honourable meal that night
The wine tasted liked a cleansing fluid
The bread was a solace that brought a smile
To my hungry and tired eyes.

‘A house in the middle of nowhere
What is the reason for it, I ask, forgive me’
She stared at me for a while but there
Was no reply for the question I proclaimed.

It was after a while that she shook her head
and took my hand to take me upstairs
I looked at the sill that held the flowers
They were withering, dead, drying within hours.

‘My husband and I, had a sheep
One undone stable, two ponds complete
But he is no more, for he died in the war
I got the letter some time before dawn.’

‘I feel the pain you feel, young sir
For losing a dear one leaves you empty and alone
I have no one to share and stir
The will to live has left my soul.’

She cried as she related her tale
Her husband valiant efforts to end
The war through the killings he made
He was a general
General Alfred Morgane.

I screamed as the name
Uttered from her mouth
I was shocked, stunned
Where my fate had brought.

‘What matter is it?’ she asked me, concerned
I looked away from the wife I had hurt
She knew not the truth but when she would
There would be nothing she could do about it.

‘The name sounded similar, that’s all
I need to make a move, its almost nightfall’
‘But where will you go in this stormy weather?
Stay here tonight, go tomorrow, when its better.’

Its years after the war now
And I’m an old man
Dying soon enough
Ending my life’s quest.

But the moonlight lady
Is etched in my heart
For when she kept me for the night
She knew the truth, after all.

The letter mentioned my face, my name, my dress
She knew I was the killer she met
But her nature was something exceptional
She was wondrous, teaching me a lesson.

Life doesn’t set deals straight
Or bring back the dead
It makes us learn to accept
To love, to care, to joyfully caress.

Let the blood be cemented on the wall
But remember its meaning
We are all the same people
Learning from move to move.

What you learn today
Will make you think about tomorrow
The youngsters today should
Lead us into glory.

I am dying now
And this was my story
About a woman and a man
Who found faith in war and its glory