Break up

“Who knows how much further we'll go on

Maybe I'll be sorry when you're gone

I'll take my chances

I forgot how nice romance is

I haven't been there for the longest time”

-          Billy Joel

This has not been going right

not for a while now

not as well as it should have been

And you have taught me to be brave enough

To admit that the fault is not mine

My time does not allow me

to make love as my priority

But love should be the priority

or it shouldn’t exist at all

I am glad to have you in my life

Don’t think for a moment that I take you for granted

But I’m unable to do justice to what is between us

Maybe if we’d met in a different time…

Perhaps…

But then again, you did meet me in a different time

You aren’t the first I confront this dilemma with

And probably won’t be the last

Those are the words of a man who accepts his faults

without trying to change them

This, is not you

It’s who I am

We do not change into other things as we grow older

We become more of ourselves

Living free and wild

The hollowness we surround ourselves in

allows us to fill our lives with ourselves

and once in a while,

like a claustrophobe in a suffocating room

we need a change of air

You are my breath of fresh air

one that I do not allow myself

I’d rather stay confined, tied in to my rotten room

Unwilling to open the windows

Afraid of what you might bring in

I’m already too busy with the mess inside

I shan’t allow more

So perhaps I wish to prolong this

Perhaps I wish to postpone

I want to continue to coexist

In your mind only, without seeing you

I want to prolong love,

without the burden of being together

I want you to echo within you, as you would within me

For us to haunt, tug, and shout inside one another

Flaring years later, wiser, appreciating better

Like a bookmark long forgotten in a dear title

What I know is I cannot move forward

Not right now

Maybe you’ll wait

Maybe you won’t

My loss if you don’t

Who knows how much further we'll go on

Maybe I'll be sorry when you're gone

I'll take my chances

I forgot how nice romance is

I haven't been there for the longest time

Vishal Gupta

2 Apr 2019

Party

You were invited to the party; but you arrived late

The music was on, the tables were set

You walk in, looking for a familiar face

That’s when they invite you in and greet you with grace

You take some time to greet the hosts

make pleasantries and raise a toast

You then take your chair to wait a bit

and take a look around the room as you sit

The games were already on, as people lost and won

Groups were already divided, but willing to take more on

Grudges both silent and violent did already start

and of course power structures were playing their part

You take a while to take the environ

and the more you hear and watch the better you learn

For soon shall you be invited to take part

and take the party forward, as early comers depart

You start to make friends, and make some enemies too

You realized this late, but entering after you too there were a few

The party doesn’t seem to know an end, you find someone like you

And a toast is raised, for this is now your party anew

It’s now that a friend departs, not someone close though

One of the first you met at the party, never to return you know

He goes home and now takes rest, for his part is done

and slowly the party becomes yours, the despair and the fun

And one by one all friends depart, even your special one like you

The party feels familiar, the faces seem new

But now you’re tired, and wish to go home as well

You’d have liked to stay a bit longer, had your friends also dwelt

You look at the doors, but they haven’t called you yet

And you look around once more, watching as you wait

You take a while to take the environs

and the more you hear and watch the better you learn

Vishal Gupta

3^rd June 2018

Void

A great void persists,

in the chasms of his soul

A vacuum, suffocating him

draining his energies and strength

His mind wanders in space, without anchor

as time passes by, he starts to lose hope

He seeks out memories that once were

of joy and love and peace and life

He remembers that happiness

can be found even in the darkest of times

If only one just remembers

to turn on the lights

Exhausted, he wonders if he wants to fight

he considers if he wants to pick himself up

The true test of strength is not how hard man falls

But if he wills himself to stand up again

Eyes heavy, he wishes to drift off

and let another future face his reality

He takes crutches of distractions, feigning sanity

shallow love, stories, food, power, and fantasy

For he won’t be judged for confirming to norms absurd

He shal’t be though, if they knew he needs a hug

And dark clouds gather, to no relief

but offer no rains, to drench his soul deep

He fears not death, but welcomes it

Perhaps that is his fallacy, making him weak

How does one fight longer than possible without

that most powerful impulse of the spirit

And he looks up, to make the climb

only this time, without an anchor to keep him from dying

Men have no hell, save one they make for themselves

and no torture is more severe, than that born in his own soul

For as long as life breathes on, man must live with hope

learning like shipwrecked men turning to sea from insatiable thirst

There is no true despair, without hope

for hope is the only thing, that poisons men’s souls

He understands the people, for their petty souls

true that Brutus too was an honourable man

for men was as good as the world allows them to be

and morals are cast out like a bad joke

What stops a dog from eating another, when hunger strikes?

What stops man from eating his brother, when need arrives?

A great void persists,

in the chasms of his soul

but how difficult may it be

to have a lump out of your throat

beautiful smiles, such simple things

yet so far, why would they seem

Vishal Gupta

14^th June 2018

Bookmarks

Humor the thought

What if you could bookmark relationships?

Think about it

You have a friend, a loved one, a family member, a pet,

or anyone you love or care for or hate or feel any thing

What if it was possible, to bookmark a relationship

To go back to whenever you wanted to

Right where you left off

Or maybe you'd just bookmark the good memories.

And choose to ignore the bad ones

The ones that you don't want to remember

And just go back to again and again

Would that be wonderful?

OR

What if you could place a bookmark in a relationship

You'd promise yourself that you'd return "soon"

When you have more time or more money or more clarity or more stability

Or when your parents are happy or when you are independent

or just next year or the year after that or after graduation

You'd make promises to yourself

And bookmark them

But you know that you wouldn't return

Life would get the better of you

And the bookmark would be lost in the sands of time

Then suddenly one day, cleaning old cobwebs of your life

You discover it again

Dusty. Rusted.

You're not ready for this right now

The bookmark is still there

It's somewhat familiar

You made a promise to yourself

You know you're not going to keep it

Hush! no one needs to know

But you take a small whiff

It smells familiar

Smells older

It's slightly torn

You don't mind

Are you prepared to pick it up again?

Continue where you left off?

Or do you leave it behind

because it’s not yours anymore?

Vishal Gupta

2 Apr 2019

Bodhgaya

I had left from my hometown in Calcutta for Bodhgaya and Dashrath Manjhi Road hoping it to be a soul-satisfying 2 day trip. I arrived at Gaya at 6:00 in the morning. After bargaining with different rickshaw walas for 30 mins where they’d try to squeeze in more money after you got in, I finally found one that seemed to be reliable and headed off first to Dashrath Manjhi Road.

As you approach the historic site, you can feel the echoes of chisel and hammer hitting rock as one man labored to cut a way out of a freaking mountain! It’s as if you can hear his screams of agony, pain, and triumph as he kept hitting hammer after hammer to carve out the mountain. It appears as if the locals have taken it upon themselves to keep alive the legacy. En route you can see many half-cut mountains. You quickly understand that this is because a lot of stone mining is being done in the vicinity. This one time you do not feel bad for the scars being inflicted upon Mother Nature. After all, Gehlaur has little use and no respect for mountains. And it’s a spectacle to see man overcoming mountains. Very fittingly in the heart of Bihar which is supposed to be nourished by the streams of Ganga. This is no place for mountains. And so the legacy lives on. A gate and a huge poster adorn the starting of the 110m road. 110m. Sounds almost insignificant in front of modern day technology. Yet in the absence of this road Gehlaur was a slave to the mountain. The road is not flat. It goes uphill to where the highest point of the cross section of the mountain would have been, and then comes down again towards Gehlaur. However, I could not see any signs of civilization for as far as I could see at the other end. I guess Gehlaur was not right next to the mountain itself but a little far away. Wikipedia tells me that the road reduced the distance between Gehlaur and the nearest town with a doctor from 55 km to 15 km. Only 110m did that! the question in the movie comes to me. When faced with a difficult task, you can ask yourself, ‘is this more difficult than cutting down a mountain?’

Once you see it for yourself, the movie stops being fiction and becomes real. And I guess that’s all it’s about. So I walked along the road for a bit till I heard a hissing noise. Again taking cue from the movie, I imagined a snake. And that was my cue to get out of there. So I made way to Bodhgaya. The road to Bodhgaya would take me through Gaya once again.

I arrived at Bodhgaya around 9:30. The first place I went to was the Great Buddha Statue, advertised as 80’ tall while actually being only 70’ tall. I want to point out how casually I used the word “only” here. As if 70’ or 80’ would make any difference or the statue any less imposing. Bodhgaya is a myriad of temples and eateries. Soon I’d checked into the hotel (Hotel Sakura, nice and clean with proximity to most stuff – recommended), seen half-an-episode of “Two Broke Girls”, taken a bath, spread out my things in the room, and seen enough Buddhist temples to grow bored of them. By 11:30 I knew I was headed towards the Mahabodhi temple, home of the Bodhi tree.

By 12:00, I was inside the Mahabodhi temple. I saw the Bodhi Tree. I think I might have liked to write beneath it but I also know that I’m not a guy who’d sit under a tree and write. I prefer rooms with tables. No matter if it was the most famous and holiest tree in the world, I was not enticed. I decided to leave early and go back to my family. Ironically, that seemed to be the right thing to do at that time. Maybe because Bodhgaya turned out to be a pretty boring city. Or maybe because it’s very small. There’s a lot of walking involved but the roads aren’t that good. The food turned out to be bad. Also, I guess there was a spot of a companion that I missed by my side.

Despite that, as I left the city, I felt energetic. As if something had grown clear within me. As if I’d found my answers within even though I lost the ability to articulate them. Did the teachings of Buddha really have any effect on me due to the place? Or due to my journey? Maybe we’re not supposed to find out.