Hazy Heights

we were seeking solace at the heights of Nilgiris, far away from the unsettled greed of city speeds.the thick fog had a venomously slow pace ,billowing the dense green tops of those hills.the drizzling made the misty wild a holy  hood to cover its enigmatic depths of divinity.but soon the charm  of drizzling changed to heavy pour down like a wrath to kill our heaven.....but we unknowingly started our voyage towards serenity before the rain drops trickle down deep into our conscience .....
i was braving the rain and grueling cold....trekking down the  hill...i felt like a warrior struggling down the rocky path...and i could see my hair in front of my eyes in glowing black from which water drops drip down....i wanted a space where rain drops wouldn't intrude my peace i was cherishing that time...but my struggle went in vain.. i found no shelter...so i had to accept the rain,the cold and the thoughts they inject in ,with sharp strikes inside my silent serene lake....it is our mind's unimaginable vastness to make accustomed to a  pain with which we have to live with everyday or a pain without a choice.....so with time the lake absorbed the strangeness of rain drops  and continued flowing in its course silently...
friends followed, they also had no choice but start enjoying the extremity of nature and her untamed beauty.... the body was churning itself to counter the brutal cold...with shivering limbs drenched in rain we had biscuits....people who found shelter in their cars were i think looking at us as insane teens talking and laughing in midst of freezing cold and rain ,eating biscuits without showing any trace difficulty ...
not all trips having frightening turns...but this one had when one of my friend was struck by a leech in his hand....blood came out from his hand when he pulled out the blood sucking worm.....the spreading of blood in his hands with water just took me away to a valley smelling death which had a mask of lush beauty, haze and silence covering a viciously cruel face...the tranquility of silence was torn with another leech striking my hand ...but the real intimidating sight was to see the grain sized blood sucker going perpendicular in my hand drilling down my skin to suck its ecstasy...my blood.....i had to push so hard to remove the unwanted alien in my body....but the image of its fury, to pierce through my skin ,went venom like into my purified mind as fear oozed in my blood.....the valley suddenly unmasked its deadly half and i was too weak to escape back to the world of peace....too weak that the cold and rain was no longer enjoyable instead started to toil us down and to succumb....and our silence was no longer reflecting the inside peace but it was the terrifying numbness to respond to the backlash happening within.
but again it also dint last.... the tribal people working in the plantation estates saw us shivering and drowning in cold.....they were talking tamil -malayalam which sounded strange and they looked primitive...no they were natural ..more suited to be here than us....they offered us black tea...the warmth of the tea brought us back to senses...i saw  kindness in their eyes and wrinkled faces.....one women asked us to cover the hot steel cup tightly to escape from the chilling aura surrounding us....and the feeling of unconditional care felt great ...

we started our journey back....riding down each hairpin curves.....through the dark wet forest...we wanted a break and took a space in the rock facing an abyss filled with white mist flowing in grace...minds beaming with thoughts don't experience time...we were melting in thoughts like dew drops...
riding our way back to the dull routine of city lives i understood we were getting back slowly to the peripheral face of consciousness and material reality....
with  depths of wild ,faded past our sights...i am now aware how powerful a thought act in you...how influential a simple feeling can be...which,in a blink of a thought inserted by an image perceived showed the beauty of forest changing to the face of evil..and a hue of love turned it back to heaven.....

HUE ON RUST

it was that weary yellowed photograph which i kept in my secret collection took me back to the vintage part of my life.i can hear my son fighting with his mother when she found cigarette packet in his room....i couldn't say anything...i came to my room to find solitude from that clash of the titans......now i am at my convenient  confinement inside that big house......to relapse into my college days ....i found that old lively pic of our gang....
that time resistant photograph is the replica of our times......that single frame have absorbed every vital ingredients of our age....a Walkman,panama cigarettes,big carrera shades, a pack of grass,beer bottles surrounded by five of us looking like tribes in laughter lost in a fantastic world of our own.....
it was the time of our lives ....where every second was a celebrated moment,every ride had new destiny,and every day had a suspense ....when we five guys found the pride in riding rx 100 roaring past the girls waiting for bus,long hair and beard admiring the hippie culture,and the motto was "drugs leaf and pink floyd"...
the nights when guys trip in those vast blue skies melting  inside their thoughts forgetting the pain and residing over the illuminated night .....
the time when love was so sublime,subtle and less expressive that a glance means a burst opened champagne bottle....and every love lost creates a life sinking in darkness....soothing  in grass and the musical chords of floyd,marley and jim morrison... mostly resulting in disastrous ends of depression....
Joe,the romanticist  in our group,soft spoken like his words felt like the melting of dew drops.....colored our lives with his music and poems in those nights thawed with smoke and beer .....
one night changed our life ..like plunge back from our trippy world of colors to the black and white of reality....the long silence we have been noticing of joe had an abrupt end......sub conscious was the norm then.....Joe was in his own world.....always singing those famous lines "i have become comfortably numb" and playing those psychedelic chords in his guitar.....he was alone in his island... we used to say he is doping to enjoy his real addiction to depression....but none of us realy understood that he was enjoying a hallucinating darkness .....
the usual night in terrace ....transcending away to find new worlds.....no one really noticed  Joe ....humming a song looking at the sky....."thoughts fill our life....images fill our life...sounds fill our life....when our senses are shut down we sleep in the bed of fantasy...every sleep is a replica of death....every blink is a reversion to death....that's when we go inside....to ourselves,were the real universe resides.....exploring every nook and corner ...escaping from all our senses and link towards the outside world...which is full of pain and havoc...so submerge to the inside world were there is no pain to suffer....to be comfortably numb.....i am done here....you guys coming??".....these words from Joe had a  rhyme and blended beautifully in that night..
we actually were deeply thinking over what he was saying while he already jumped down from the hostel terrace to his inner world....the song "i have become comfortably numb" was playing in some recorder....our few seconds delay to fight back to consciousness cost our friend....after a pause ...there was noises all round....shouting ...alarm of ambulance.....tears....but all that time i was calm and i was inert upon his absence ....
now sitting in my room with a family and a highly paid job and plush to vane upon.....i miss something .....a comfortable numbness to sleep upon is missing..... and many a times in this busy life i miss my Joe, his music and his last words before silence......