Saturday, December 17, 2005

This Memory

this memory, real to every touch,
every breath
this memory lives around me
this memory is the moment her tears fell,
this memory is the moment i fell
into the dark recesses
of my own hell
for eternity i see nothing but this memory,
cursed to live in this unresolved pain
i stand before her
with words that cut her
i stand before her with words that tear
i stand before her with words that i can never withdraw
i stand before her for ever and a year
did i hear it?
did i hear her heart break?
did i hear the world dissapear?
did i hear her sobs as they tore through me?
did i live this memory once before?
did i walk down the lonely street?
leaving emptyness in my wake?
did i hear the tires scream as the lights turned to darkness?

i stand in my memory, this memory forever
i stand in my hell, while she stares in horror


........inspired by a poem by disturbed rythm

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Of Poetry & Subconscious Motivations

I have been writing poetry for about 8 years now. To this day I have been unable to understand what drives me to write the kind of stuff I do. I know about the love poems I write which you will see here soon, but the rest of the stuff is beyond me. The pictures I see in my minds eye are not from my life or any life I know. It is as if someone put them there. Someone I have never known and probably will never meet.

There are times that at three in the morning I rise from a troubled attempt to sleep and discover a line running through my head. I rush to pick up a piece of paper and write it down and then my pen starts moving further and lo and behold, half an hour later I have filled three sheets of paper of words and emotions that have never belonged to me. I see visions of horror, sorrow, love and happiness, insanity, death and loneliness. What brings these to my mind? From where do they come? I hope I never find out. A single word can trigger these things off.

There have been times when my mother looks at me with a worried expression and asks me what made me write something so morbid. Am I unhappy? Am I angry about something? My answer is invariably, "I don't know". My grandmother once told me, "You have a perfectly happy family but you write as if you come from a broken home." To that I replied, "I don't know why"

One theory I thought of recently is that everyone is connected through a "collective unconscious", a theory not new to this world. This collective unconscious ties us in with every other living soul on this planet. It has the power to foretell the future, as in ESP and may also be the reason for intuition, friendship, love and empathy. It is not uncommon in animals to have natural instinct to help them survive from the moment they are born. We have been softened over the eons of evolutions to these instincts but they are still within us.

What about the feeling that someone is watching you? What about that feeling of knowing what another person is going to say next. What about "I have a bad feeling about this"? What about GOD?

God is, to me, nothing but faith. It is a collective thought so powerful that it brings people together and tears them apart at the same time. He drives people to survive and He drives people to their deaths. Could not the collective unconscious make things happen if it wanted to? Is that what "miracles" are? Could some of us be more aware of this than others? What about fortune tellers who are uncannily right about everything in your life? What about me? Could my thoughts and dreams and poems be a result of someone else's thoughts inadvertently being perceived in my mind driving me to try and rationalize them by writing them down?

Could it be the source for the "Force" that George Lucas made famous in the Star Wars Epic? Visions, enlightenment, ideas, inspiration, intuition, religion, God. Could all these be the interpretations of minds becoming aware of the collective unconscious, or rather, the collective conscious?

If so...How do you explain ghosts?

Saturday, November 19, 2005

A Poem by a Poet

© Abhijit Chanda 2004

With High hopes and low doubts
I stepped into this world
With sweat and toil and midnight oil
The hell began to unfurl

It showed me more questions
Than the answers that I seek
Numbers I couldn?t comprehend
I was alone and naked to my feet

A nightmare grew
One we?ve all seen aplenty
An exam lay before me
But no answers dropped by to help me

Utterly stupid
Utterly shocked
Utterly dumbfounded
My mind utterly blocked

Numbers are for the non-poets
And poems are for me
Omar Kemal spoke gibberish
When he spoke of decision trees

How am I to live through
This hell I have bought
I paid good money
Will they give me what I sought?

Constant torture
Day by day
With incomprehensible equations
The answer to success, they say, is hidden in these numbers
But I told you before
These days have turned meaningless
What numbers am I supposed to crunch?
When I feel so damned toothless?

But by and by something awakes
And stirs within me
A vague understanding is born
One day it shall set me free

Before I know it
This year has come to an end
I have nothing to show for it
I have no pride to defend

But alas! One day a revelation arrives
Mistakes are made by everyone
And everyone survives
I have made many
And so have many others
But if I learn to build my soul around them
The very wall will shudder

Success is beckoning me
I journey to its embrace
Nothing now can break me
For I have looked Hell in its face

..... a poem inspired by the book "Snapshots from Hell"

Your War Returns to You

© Copyright Abhijit Chanda 2004

As the bodies fall and feed the Earth
I stare across the desert dreaming
No more that I can do
For this world
All the bodies spread through
Like a ragged velvet carpet
On a hungry ground

Remember the dead
Creep through your thoughts
And remember them
Don?t forget
For they will never forget you
How you teased their minds
Like honey

Freedom cried to be freed
To be born again from the hearts
Of the betrayed
The lonely morals stand once again
The rage of hell

Countless slashed of their lives
Reaped for nothing
A failed harvest
Yet they scream on
In vengeance
For they must have what was never theirs
For they must kill
Who was never born to die
From these hands
Yet they scream on

The thirst for flesh is not enough
One must take what was never given
Never was theirs.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

MADNESS

The fires burned in the nightly glow,
The heat was real,
Chilled the bone
The hearts born there,
Born of black ice,
The eyes that saw there,
Burned in blue hell

As he walked through the passage
To his world,
Creatures of obscurity,
Tumbled towards him,
Straight from the furnace of it?s birth,
The madness creeps in

Beast

How can you just leave me?
Sitting here
Sitting here
Breaking through my mental barrier
I want to take you
Take you and break you
Break you away from this torn exile
From this reality in which I am exiled
Exiled for eternity
Broken, shredded, torn
I want to take you away
You don't belong here
You don't belong with me
With my reality
Don't stay with me
I might hurt you
My mind will hurt you
It will break you
Like it broke me
Like it broke me
Like it broke my soul
I am a soulless shell
A body with a demon for a brain
I don't deserve you
You don't deserve me
I might break you
Run away
Before it gets you
I can't stop it
It's got me
It'll make me do things I don't want to
I might take you
I don't want to
Take you, break you
Please leave me
I?m sorry

Saturday, November 12, 2005

AAAHHHHH

AAAAHHHHH it seems I have walked through the looking glass or fallen down a rabbit hole. Only time will tell. For the longest time I have wondered what on earth a BLOG is, and now I know. What an unearthly experience. This is possibly going to be seen by a million people, if they are interested that is. And to these million people , I say a big HULLOOO. This is all very new to me but I intend on settling down and crackling my knuckles and getting to work. I must thank my will-be brother-in-law for this idea. Thanks brother, and welcome to the family.

Too bland for you hunh? Well not to worry, you can look forward to more of my ramblings in the days to come. I hope you like it. If you do or if you don't, do let me know. Till then I bid you adieu.

Friday, November 11, 2005

Rock!...Delhi?

Here is an article I wrote a few years ago....

Rock in Delhi is certainly dying. Me, being a hardcore rock fan was considered weird by most of my classmates and schoolmates.

Rock is considered uncool and shunned by most people. As rock is mostly sung in English (Except for the new Hind-rock which has come out recently it can't really be called rock, maybe soft-rock but definitely not rock.) and I don't listen to the more popular dance and Hindi music I was given the label of Angrez. (Not to mention that I can't speak Hindi very well.)

Rock is what I call real music. Note-Everyone has their own opinion on what real music is. This is just my opinion. After all, I live for this stuff. Real music, real talent, real emotions. (Unlike most of these boy bands who have all the music and lyrics written by someone else for them.) The music called rock almost always has a meaning. And good rock normally has a deeper meaning than Come on Barbie let's go party. And it normally has more subject matter than what boy bands use i.e. love, sex, baby, girl etc.

Yes, rock does have love songs. On the whole they are very poetic and stirring but rock also talks about heartbreak, tragedy, fear, death, destruction, humour, insanity, pain, euphoria, poetry and philosophy. Most people think that rock is just some guy with a guitar singing his woes. Totally wrong. That guy sitting at the guitar is singing his emotions, not just woes. If he's not singing he is just sitting there playing for the sole reason that his soul feels good when he plays. Rock is the music of power and freedom and in Delhi eccentricity can be included in that list. You might not have noticed but most peace and tribute concerts and charity concerts involve rock bands in the majority. I mean Woodstock was all anti-war and pro-freedom and love, wasn't it?

These days is the time of techno where songs can be made on a whim with the use of computers in a matter of hours and their only purpose is to keep you dancing whereas a rock song takes ages to make. It involves first the concept, then the lyrics and the music writing and then hours on hours of arduous practicing over and over again until you get it just right. Then come the recording. So much more sweat, heart and emotion goes into each song. A true labour of love for music that is. Rock songs have more purpose than to make people dance. Most rock songs aren't meant to be danced to in the first place. And to add to it all, who will remember techno in ten years time? But rock will live on forever.

Ever since the fifties Rock 'n' Roll has been ridiculed, abused and attacked by people who can't understand it and most of all can't handle the constant change that rock keeps going through. When Rock 'n' Roll first came into view people thought it to be an outrage and couldn't understand this revolution in music and deemed the most light hearted song the work of the Devil himself. Not so for the younger generation which welcomed it with open arms.
A lot of children (my own mother was one of them) were banned from listening to rock but slowly their freedom returned and rock grew stronger than ever.

The sixties and seventies brought along the flower children. A tremendously large group of youngsters, revolting against the Vietnam War by having unprotected sex, doing drugs and drinking. Their motto was, in a way, "Peace man, pass the joint." And a lot of them converted to Hinduism for a reason I haven't been able to figure out yet. Something about eternal peace, love and a higher state of consciousness. To that I reply, "Say what?" Hence Woodstock was born with a gathering of thousands to a concert the world would never forget. Rock spun around into a whole new religion. Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, Janis Joplin, The Doors and such like changed the world of rock into something spiritual, philosophical and poetic.

Up till today rock has been blamed for anything and everything that happens to this ridiculously silly world. Kids start smoking, blame rock. Kids are free, blame rock. People are eccentric, blame rock. People do drugs, blame rock. People kill other people, blame rock. For example, after the Columbine High School Massacre (where 2 boys came to school one day and started shooting kids before shooting themselves) who was blamed? Why, rock of course. Specifically Heavy Metal band Marilyn Manson and a German Industrial Metal band called Rammstein. They were thought of to be the root cause to the massacre because their music is loud and violent and the culprits listened to them. Think about the guy who went up on stage and killed Dimebag Darrel of Pantera, arguably one of the best metal guitarists of all time. It was the music, right?They probably wouldn't have done this if they listened to opera or something, right? Wrong. They were deranged morons. They would have done it anyway. The truth is half the world, including me, listens to them ( the metal bands, not the killers of course. So do my friends. You don't see us running around pumping people full of lead. Hell, I can barely hit a fellow let alone kill him. Why are they accused? Because they're different, because they rock! Little do most people know but these people have families and kids of their own. All they're doing is expressing their emotions and empathising with other people in the best way they know-making music.

There is also the misconception that all rock associated people are high on drugs most of the time. There are actually a lot of bands that are very much against drugs among other things like pollution, nuclear warfare and war in general. R.E.M, Smashing Pumpkins, Pearl Jam and Rage Against The Machine are some of these bands. The Smashing Pumpkins actually sacked their drummer after he was found to be doing drugs. Pearl Jam, on the other hand, has recently come out with a video called "Do the Evolution" which is about the arrogance and hate the human race harbors for its own kind. It's a very powerful and sarcastic song in a way. The have also contributed to No Boundaries-A tribute to the Kosovar Refugees with two songs. Most of these bands including U2 also contribute greatly to Greenpeace and take an active roll not only in concerts but also in marches etc.

All in all we might be eccentric but we do have a heart. Why don't you go out and buy a rock album. Be it Anthems or be it Pink Floyd. Put it into your deck, put the volume up so that you are surrounded by the sound and listen, really listen. Feel the music, feel the lyrics, feel the emotion.

It worked for me. I hope it does for you.


..... I do admit, though, that rock has definately grown in this city. More and more people are getting addicted to this stuff. Concerts and performaces pepper the city these days almost every week. Crazed fans start moshing at the drop of a hat... and yet, this is just the beginning. One has to admit, the crowd is still very young, immature, when it comes to this genre. Don't get me wrong, we all like thrashing about and headbanging but there is a limit to the madness. These days all these guys want to listen to is death metal and new age metal, some of which is good and most of which just ends up making no sense whatsoever after a while. Most of todays bands end up as cover bands with much left to be desired in the creative front. It will take time to mature out of the Metallica-Megadeth-Maiden Madness andIthe Slayer-Sepultura Sickness but I think we are on the right path. The crowds will mature and it will bring forth a new era in Indian music, the era of creativity, originality and recognition of the labour of love in every song.