To Alexander Blok

Your lonely apartment by the canal
Carries images of a bygone age
Age before the torment began
And the thugs took over
Your peace, your poetry, your life
(and with you, of your generation).

You rightly said Blok-
'Night, a street, a lamp, a drugstore, a senseless wan light.
 Live another quarter of a century- all will be the same.
There is no way out.'
Yet my spirit craves for change
A human family, a planet as home.

Long live verses, beauty fades!

A poet lived here,
On the banks of the river Moika
With his young wife Natalia
Who had two sisters and four kids
The poet had fallen in love
With the young damsel of sixteen
Who never understood the depth of his love.

She loved balls and social status,
So the poet brought her to St. Petersburg
The Imperial Capital
He rented eleven rooms apartment with servants for her for five years
But he could only live here for four months
Before he was killed in a duel.

The poet was provoked by a young officer
Who has noticed Natalia at the balls
The poet had to save his honour
So he challenged the young officer for a duel
Though the poet always knew
He was not good with guns.

How could the poet have kept mum,
Natalia was young and beautiful
The poet did, all he could,
For the happines of his love,
Today the poet is still alive but the beauty is dead
Long live poet's verses while beauty fades.

The Hermitage

On Sundays or Saturdays
Or whenever I can
I rush to the Hermitage
For a rendevous with my loves
Those hang on the walls
Danaes, Floras, Madonnas, Venuses, Psyches...
Compete for my attention...
And wow what I see...
The menacing cupid, untying the girdle of Venus
Tahiti girl with her tropical fruit,
The woman with the wild flower,
Judith trampling over the evil,
Mary Magadelene lying in the grotto,
Zeus, the bull taking away lovely Europa,
St. Cecilia playing music  for dying Cleopatra
Or perhaps for the broken hearted lute player?
The dance of the veils on the banks of the Neva
The saviour of the treasures of civilizations-
Pharao's tombs, gold and diamond treasures,
But above them the Onessa petroglyphs,
Hermitage, you are the only one!
And, I'll rush to you,
From far corners of the Earth,
For a rendevous with my loves,
That hang on your walls.

Milky Way

Milky Way, Milky Way
Like four armed Swastika
How many stars have you got?

Sun and the planets, one out of billions
Making a circle in 250 million years
What was it like in the beginning of last Sun year?

You have all the secrets,
You have all the answers,
Tell us, how many more years are left ahead?

Milky Way, Milky Way
Drifting slowly in the vast Universe
When will you merge with Great Attraction?

Five year of blogging and what happened to my seven wishes!

When I look back at the journey covered in the last five years of blogging, it seems tremendous. I started blogging on 5th April 2005 when I was in Delhi and kept blogging during my two years stay in Moscow. When I arrived in St. Petersburg, blogging took a beating as I had so much work to do but still I did not completely stop it. Blogging got some adverse attention during this period and it had to be temporarily stopped, however blog or Web Logs are online diaries and those of us who are in the habit of writing chronicles, blogs can't be stopped, they run inside.
It was blogging that helped me express myself through prose, poetry and earned me friends worldwide from Canada to Australia, Africa to Latin America, Europe to Philippines. Friends with whom I could share my thoughts, from whom I could learn. Blogging made sharing ideas globally easy and making friends without borders easier. Blogs brought our common humanity a step closer making the world a little smaller.
On this blog 'Ideas & Universe' I wrote and shared more than a hundred poems, a few short stories and many thoughts and ideas attracting about 13000 visitors from 120 countries.
During this period I have been able to publish three book 'River Valley to Silicon Valley'(its translation in Russian) , 'Enigmatic Love' & Fallen Leaves of Autumn. 'Candling the Light' is soon to be published.

On 6th April 2005 I had written down my Seven Wishes
I would like to note down the progress so far in the last five years.
1. First Wish- Building a primary school and health care centre at the place I was born, connecting it with a road  and providing electricity and telephone connection. -There is already mobile phones in every home and 10-12 hours of electricity in the village. A road (not metalled yet) has been built linking it with the main road.  Primary school and health care centre are yet to come. I tried very hard with the district administration of Nalanda but have not been successful yet. Hope in the next five years, it will be possible to achieve that. (Incidentally my elder brother is building a temple there but not a school).
2. Second Wish-to build a Girl’s High school at the village I have grown up and studied till the primary school level.  -The primary school has been upgraded into a middle school and would be upgraded to a High School in the coming years(hope to be the next five years). Though there will not be a separate Girl's High School, girls can still study upto High School.
3. Third Wish- to build a SAARC University at Nalanda, the place of the world’s most ancient seat of learning where once Nalanda University existed for many centuries. I have been lucky in fulfillment of this wish as my wishes have been granted in double as Govt. has decided to build a South Asian University(SAU) near Delhi and Nalanda International University(NIU) near Rajgir. The land has already been acquired and foundation stones been laid down. I hope in the next five years, both of them start functioning.
4. Fourth Wish- A flood free Bihar- No concrete developments have taken place.
5. Fifth Wish- South Asian Union - The situation is in flux.
6. Sixth wish- Earth Council- Successor of UN or a reformed UN, an organization for global governance with a parliamentary assembly. Some steps in this direction are visible.
7. Seventh Wish- Spreading the seeds of life in the Universe- Mars Mission seems to be moving forward.

What I have found surprisingly that no additional wishes have come to my mind in the last five years. I have been painting  a lot since last two years and surprisingly my themes revolve around these wishes. I hope that in the coming time I am able to write that all the wishes have been fulfilled.

The planet will be the same

Air will change,
Water will change,
Climate will change,
People will change,
Country will change,
My friends say,
Hearing the news,
That I have to leave.


Dear friends, I say,
Air will change
Water will change,
Climate will change,
People will change,
Country will change,
But, planet will be the same.

At the Alexander Blok museum

I visited today afternoon the flat of Alexander Blok(1880-1921) , the Russian poet of the Silver Age after my verses were compared with his by Guzel Strelkova in her article on my poerty for a literary journal. His life ended tragically after the October revolution when he was forced to live in a smaller place and was burdened with the mundane.
Blok said - 'A poet is not someone who writes poems but someone who has rhythm inside'

His haunting words -

Night, a street, a lamp, a drugstore,
A senseless, wan light.
Live another quarter of a century-
All will be the same. There is no way out.

You die-you begin from the beginning,
And everything comes round again:
The night, the icy ripple on the canal,
The drugstore, the street, the lamp.

and...

I would forget about valour, deeds,

And glory on this mournful earth

When your face in the simple frame

Would shine before me on the table.

Alexander Blok