Sonnet for the soul

 An armed monarch,  order’d his horse a momentary freeze

 At the sight of an old man who sure had a skeleton and skin

 Sitting curled, like a circle in the freezing cold and teasing breeze

 He had none to cover, yet had a warm grin to wear and win

The conqueror, irked, tossed a shawl as alms in regal beckon

 ‘None I take from beggars’ said the naked to the startled king

 ‘For one who needs is the needy and I need none’

 ‘You still need territory, O beggar!’ said the Solomon’s ring

 Attitude galore yields altitude for sure and true majesty

 Riches real are in the mind and not in the external find

 Many he owns, spend he does and makes money today aplenty   

 Does he then stop these in the day next with a satiated mind?

 Skies shower rain, air blows life and silken stars shine

 The best things of life have no bill ever, for you to whine

100-word story

Can a story be told in as short as 100 words? And what if it is made in exactly 100 words excluding the title?


What follows is a succinct endeavour to enthral.

                                          Lipstick strikes


I stood on a bridge over a river when I discovered that I was in front of an underworld don. My boyfriend had kept me in the dark so that I deliver this dodgy package. I didn’t want to die or get raped.

Smiling sweetly, I made a call.

‘Hi honey, package delivered to this gentleman at 67 kimberley avenue. But why on earth did you ask me to report him to police?’

My mobile then fell into the river.

The don swore my ex-boyfriend.

And the reason I dropped my mobile is I had made this call to 999.

Newton’s 10 Laws

In a comic morning the hazy spirit of Sir Issac Newton revealed to me the remaining 7 laws;

Gentlemen of Physics, accelerate your pen on paper now.


Newton's 4th Law of motion [quite literally!]:

Every eating action eventually has only one reaction.

Newton's 5th Law:

The loss of width in any corner of the room is directly proportional to the increase in your body width.

Newton's 6th Law:

Every woman in a state of shopping tends to remain in that state unless an external door is applied on her.

Newton's 7th Law:

Every man in a state of uniform peace tends to remain in that state until an external force of marriage is applied on him.

Newton's 8th Law:

The relationship between your remote control m, your acceleration a, and the applied body movement F is F = PATHETIC!

Newton's 9th Law:

The relationship between your mobile phone chats m, your busy bee look b, and the real fact of life R is R = LIESTYLE!

Newton's 10th Law:

The sense of direction you empower on the person in front of you in a queue is exactly proportional to the sense of surrender you show to your flight's hijacker.

By the way...

My 1st Law:

Let Newton's spirit forgive me [and the readers too!]

100-word story

Can a story be told in as short as 100 words? And what if it is made in exactly 100 words excluding the title?


What follows is a succinct endeavour to enthral.


                                             A visitor

I went speechless.

I was delivering a speech to the visitors at our museum. Pointing to a model, I had told them ‘standing here, Galileo Galilei, accused of heresy, faced the Roman inquisition’.

A stocky gentleman turned his face away.

‘How sad!’

He had a dour look on and I felt awkward.

‘Any questions sir?’

‘You exaggerate, but I’m tired of arguments.’

He left abruptly.

My embarrassment was overtaken by something very strange and strikingly similar. Was it his beard or his Italian intonation or the sombre eyes?

‘So what then did Galileo do?’ someone quizzed.

What can I answer?

100-word story

Can a story be told in as short as 100 words? And what if it is made in exactly 100 words excluding the title?


What follows is a succinct endeavour to enthral.

                                    Robotricks

‘God decoded in the Robots’ conference 2050 AD’ read the newspapers.


‘Humans never decoded God. We’ll do it’ said Robot primary R1, amid cheers.

Humans, robots and world channels zoomed on R1, that day.

‘A zillion processes and more to decode God and I touched infinity. Canis lupus familiaris, friendly specie, barks, a mammal and is called Dog’.

Someone said ‘R1’s complex analysis should have gone beyond ‘one-point compactification’ where +infinity and -infinity are treated the same. Hence ‘God’ has been reversed to ‘Dog’’.

The robots processed the failure. Since humans could marvel the omniscience of God, they won again.

A question to God – why did you create us?

This question triggered a series of other questions.


What is the scarcest commodity in the world - oil, water, gold?

None of these but lovers are the scarcest commodities in the world as only a rare few are au fait in loving fellow beings.

Why do we remember the day from a past decade when we shared our food with a hungry stranger more than the gossips of a kin that happened last Sunday?

And how can we use the term unconditional love when love is always unconditional?

If a condition is involved, even a trifle, then it is bondage or alloyed versions of love.

Bondage in relationships ties us down to something. It is a give and take without a contract. This means we have a need to expect something from others. When this need is met we feel happy and if not we feel put down.
Our world of happiness, hence, is not of our own making but that of others. If being happy is the basic nature of humans, we rely on others for this very basic need.
In other words we beg something from that person to whom we are bound. We become slaves.


Love, which is hailed by every culture, every nationality over centuries, can’t obviously be about begging or being entangled in slavery. No sensible person will approve of begging or slavery.

So love has to be something else.

What is love?

Love is all about giving. When you love, you are majestic, magnanimous and full of energy, like the sun. You are giving and at the same time overflowing & not begging anything back or scheming against anybody.

So love, by definition, is unconditional. No wonder all religions hail this one quality and place it way ahead of all other qualities. If one can learn to be a ‘lover’ in the truest sense of the word, she has grown beyond the need of / for a religion.

Love is a natural bounty transcending all religions and differences.

To start with, it is hard to love even one person in our lives unconditionally, leave alone the world.

But once we develop the ‘giving trait’ it becomes easy and might take a lifetime to expand the same for the entire world.

Saints all over the world have done this.
We have seen sterling examples in Mother Teresa, Joan of Arc and Mata Amritanandamayi et al., who have been champions in love.

Well, these are great people and what’s so great in great people being great?


The fact is all of us have loved – say, when we shared our food with a stranger or when we laughed for those ‘not-so-great jokes’ because that child was raining laughter or when you felt better from the concerned look on your dog’s eyes when you were down with flu or whenever we did a ‘life-changing-something’ to somebody and when we said ‘nothing’ to his question of ‘can I do anything for you?’

If it was pretty easy for you to recall such instances, it not only means that you have really loved but also that love has such powerful, staying power in memory.

It stays because it’s the purpose of our lives.

Tainted versions of love are easily forgotten because they are strained with conditions, expectations or crafty manipulations.

So love stays and distortions wither away.

We seek permanence in everything in a temporary world. Deep inside we really are hooked up with the ‘happily-ever-after’ concept. We plan for eternity, believe we will stay young and healthy always.


But since everything is transient, all along, we have been naturally after the unnatural.

The only saving grace is the staying power of love. Therefore our natural need for permanence can be met only by love.

‘Hence love is for what I created you’ replied God.

Mahatma

Contemplating on a dusk-dusted red sky, Mahatma Gandhi said,
‘Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will’


Down south, late T.K. Ramanuja Kavirayar, a poet from Nellai, cherishing the evening glitters of tender Tamiraparani walked across his lifeline with the same indomitable will.

The poet sung the life of Mahatma Gandhi as an epic called ‘ Mahatma Gandhi Kaviyam’ in Tamil and as ‘Bharath Reborn’ in English.


The messiah of Ahimsa who forgave his own assassin said,


‘Hate the sin, love the sinner’


The noble landlord of Nellai demonstrated the same through his creations and intentions.


At Sabarmathi Ashram, the father of India spelt out the most spiritually perilous things to humanity;

'Wealth without Work

Pleasure without Conscience

Science without Humanity

Knowledge without Character

Politics without Principle

Commerce without Morality

Worship without Sacrifice'

The epic-poet of Tamils, evinced each one of these in everyday life.


Telepathy is defined as the apparent communication from one mind to another without using the five senses.


The great Gandhi and the illustrious Gandhian, though miles apart, sang from the same hymn sheet. They were chips of the same block – epitomised by the facets of truth, Lord Ram, non-violence, vegetarianism, law and looks.


They shared the privileged reservoir of wisdom wetted in exalted values. They were soul-mates of striking semblance.


Just like the aesthetic Koperumchozhan and the poetic Pisiraandhayar!


The 63rd anniversary of the assasination of Mahatma Gandhi is just a week away from now. It calls humanity for such a call on memory line.