kuch ehsaas yuhi...

the limitlessness

Pighle neelam sa behta ye sama,
neeli neeli si khamoshiyan,
na kahin hai zameen na kahin aasmaan,
sarsaraati hui tehniyaan paattiyaan,
keh raheen hai bas ek tum ho yahan,
bas main hoon,
meri saansein hain aur meri dhadkhanien,
aisi gehraiyaan, aisi tanhaiyaan,
aur main...sirf main.
Apne hone par mujhko yakeen aa gaya.

-zindagi na milege dobara

In the crowd at the station

In the crowd at the station,

A tall man turned and smiled at me.

Although I couldn't be quite sure,

I felt I'd seen his face before.

Two days later,I saw him again,

Getting off the Agra train.

He smiled once more, and this time 

I returned the compliment,

Before he was lost in the crowd.

And then I remembered.

Of course!

This was one of the dead men

We'd had for dissection.

I'd been Demonstrator then.

I remember saying:

"here's a fine-looking corpse."

And then we peeled his skin away,

And cut him up,a little every day.

Now I don't go near the Agra train.

I wonder:

Will he smile when i see him again?

-Ruskin Bond

and she weeps....

Home they brought her warrior dead:
She nor swooned, nor uttered cry:
All her maidens, watching, said,
‘She must weep or she will die.’


Then they praised him, soft and low,
Called him worthy to be loved,
Truest friend and noblest foe;
Yet she neither spoke nor moved.


Stole a maiden from her place,
Lightly to the warrior stepped,
Took the face-cloth from the face;
Yet she neither moved nor wept.


Rose a nurse of ninety years,
Set his child upon her knee—
Like summer tempest came her tears—
‘Sweet my child, I live for thee.’ 

-Alfred Lord Tennyson

all the world's a stage......

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.

At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.

And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow.

Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. 

And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. 

The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. 

Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

  -william shakespreare (from as you like it)