The Man

silhouette of a man
Being a man is making the choice between your happiness and the happiness of your loved ones and always choosing the latter. It is about not crying when your heart is broken. It is about being silent when you are hurt the most. It is about silently checking on the doors and windows if they are properly locked when everyone else is peacefully sleeping. It is about taking the last piece of the pie until everyone else is filled. It is about working hard everyday, taking all the stress of the job, bearing the all shit of boss and office politics just because you can’t afford risks. It is about checking upon family and calling and calling them until you know they have safely reached. In the end you would know that nobody will realize what pain you went through but it doesn’t matter as you didn’t do all that for recognition. When you will be done with the life and you are about to go, you would look back at your loved ones one last time to check if everyone is OK…because you are…THE MAN…
-N2S
01012020

You Are Incredible

a woman looking at sea looking incredible

(Spare the Grammar! I don’t intend to improve it.)
The following lines are not dedicated to some Steven Spielberg science fiction movie I have downloaded from the torrent and watched in the afternoon or some TED lecture I have attended today on YouTube. I am sincerely dedicating this article to my best friend–cum-tech advisor Chandan Singh. Actually not even him, the heartfelt, mind-jolting, thought-provoking, typing-inducing, attention-seeking catalyst was the fourth beer he offered saying, “Saale kuch nahi hoga, tu toh habitual hai”. Yes he was right I am habitual but not in drinking and bullshitting but bullshitting being sober. Anyways let’s not delve any further into who said whom syndrome. There is this thought that has been bugging me since morning and I must share it with the very few people who click on the Facebook icon hoping that there would be something interesting going on instead of the usual bullshit-who ate what, who went where, who was with whom, who watched what, who did what drama. The truth the real truth, nobody cares what you do, it doesn’t matter to them. They have their own issues ready to be updated, ready to be commented, or ready to be shared over WhatsApp or after-drink Bakchodi. One moment they talk about it, the other second, “What the fuck was it?”. The very reason people like or comment on some random Facebook update is that they know the general rule. It has become a social etiquette like any other common etiquette that you shouldn’t call a person an idiot even if he is an idiot. If you have liked ten of their updates, they feel compelled to do the same for a couple of your updates, no matter how anti-intelligence they seem. This is the social networking behavior these days which has formed the base for social behavior everywhere sans the actual social behavior. Anyways I am not here to teach people what they should do; they have their own obscured conscience doing that for them. Why I am here? Damn the fourth bottle!



I am here because I see people bickering over trivial issues everywhere-How they are alone, how they not happy, how unimportant they feel sometimes or how they tend to feel suicidal and some other shitty feelings they come across when they see folks earning more than them, somebody getting more successful than them or seeing a Ram-Seeta type couple, or wondering over a totally Made by Money couple with a good looking Menka type girl with a Yamraj type man or a Hidimba type girl with a Kamdev type boy. Somebody rightly said, “Log apne dukh se itne dukhi nahi hain jitne dusre ke sukh se dukhi hain”. Must be some high level bakchod, who got these golden words out after certain percentage of alcohol mixed with his blood and reached to the cerebrum, forcing these life-changing quotes come out in a James Bond manner when he shoots a random villain and a one-liner follows involuntarily, “Yes considerably”- from Casino Royale.

Damn it, the battery on my laptop is showing that it hasn’t got enough juice to cough another ten minutes and I am too lazy to move my ass to get the charger, hence I have to cut short my speech, relief to certain folks. Here, I end this totally misplaced article by these few sentences that I originally intended to speak.

Whenever you feel sad, lonely or unimportant about yourself, remember- At any moment your body has 2.5 trillion red blood cells in your body. There are more living things on your skin than the total number of humans living on the planet. 2 gram of your DNA can hold the entire digital information of the whole world. There are 7 octillions atoms in your body that mean 7 multiply by 1000 trillion trillion atoms, more than the stars in the whole universe. So before you feel little about yourself because you have a low job, or your girlfriend or boyfriend dumped you, or you think you are fat, ugly or not good enough. Remember that you are never alone, you are not small, and you are a universe in yourself. You are more mysterious than the ocean, more unique than life itself and more important than anything ever created. You are god’s most beautiful creation known yet!!!

-N2S
23032014



रात की ख़ामोशी (Raat Ki Khamoshi)

खुशियों के तोल-मोल से दूर कहीं भुला बिसरा पड़ा है सपनों का झोला,
बालों की सफेदी अब फर्क नहीं करती,
उम्र के पकने से पहले ही दे जाती हैं जिम्मेदारियों की रसीद,
हांसिल क्या किया है समझ नहीं आता,
और कामयाबियों की फेहरिश्त इतनी लम्बी भी नहीं,

मोबाइल की डायरेक्टरी में गिनती तो बढ़ती रहती है नामों की हर रोज़,
पर उनमें करीबी शायद अब एक-दो ही,
समय अब कभी काफी नहीं होता,
ज़रुरत पूरी हो जाती है, पर जरूरतें कम होती नहीं,

टूटे सामान अब जोड़े जाते नहीं, बदल दिए जाते हैं,
जो रिश्ते थोड़े मुश्किल होने लगे, तोड़ दिए जाते हैं,
लोग वही रहते हैं, उनके स्टेटस बदल जाते हैं,
अनजान जो दोस्त बने थे, धीरे-धीरे अनजान बन जाते हैं,



दिल में अब भी बहुत पड़े हैं आधे-अधूरे अरमान,
पर शायद अब सब धीरे-धीरे हाथ खड़े करने लगे हैं,
जीने लगे हैं किसी और के लिए,
पालने लगे हैं उसे बड़े जतन से,
आखिर कल उसपर ही तो लादना है ये सपनों का झोला,

चलो अब सो जाते हैं, रात से जो थोड़ी मोहल्लत मांगी है चंद लम्हों की,
बड़े अरसे बाद दिल की बाल्टी से कुछ बातें छलकी हैं,
रात की ख़ामोशी का शोर शायद सबसे ज्यादा होता है,
की बातें खुद तक पहुँच जाती हैं…
-N2S
10032019Man looking at lights in night

Rented Room

a filled dark room with a poster and a quote written on it
While changing address, I looked at my old room for the last time,
I didn’t remember exactly when I came here and made it mine,
This room saw me grow,
It witnessed my high and low,
I had spread my world in this few hundred square feet place,
I cleaned it, maintained it, decorated it in refined taste,

It saw me and friends bursting in laughter,
It also looked at me when I was lonely and no one was there,
These walls heard my wishpers;
my late night conversations with the girl I loved,
Then it also stood silently
when my heart was broken and battered,



This was a rented address but it was my home,
It wouldn’t remember me, it would belong to someone else once I am gone,
As I stepped into the cab for my new address,
A thought came to me, which should be said,
Life is nothing but a rented room, you can’t have it forever,
So don’t get too attached to it, in the end, nothing matters…
-N2S
13072015

मंज़िल से पहले (Manjil Se Pehle)

a boy looking at the sea appearing thoughtful

थी जो आग मुझमे,
जलती थी जो मेरे अंदर,
वजह थी वह हर खुशी की,
हर सपना उससे जगमगाता था,
कहती थी हसरत, कुछ हसीन है मंज़िल मेरी,
कुछ अलग सी तकदीर है मेरी,

उस मोड़ से दूर कहीं एक राह बहुत लंबी है,
जहाँ है थोड़ी यादें, लम्हों की कमी है,
डर लगता है की ये आग बीच राह में ही बुझ ना जाए,
जीतने की ये हसरत कहीं ऐसे ही सुख ना जाए,
हर बीता हुआ दिन कुछ और साँसे खर्च कर जाता है,
कुछ चेहरे, कुछ शिकवे बेवजह दे जाता है,



कदम चलता हूँ हज़ार मगर पर क्यूँ वहीं खड़ा हूँ मैं,
जितना समझुँ में खुद को उतना उलझता जाता हूँ मैं,
आँखें बंद करूँ तो दम सा घुट जाता है,
पर खुली आँखों से भी अंधेरा दूर कहाँ जाता है,
कभी कोशिश करता हूँ किसी को हँसाने की,
पर ये सोचकर ही हँसी बिखर जाती है की यह कोशिश कितनी झूठी है,
जब खुद ही दम तोड़ चुके है अरमान,
तो फिर मंज़िल से क्यूँ ये दूरी है,

हर जाती हुई शाम मुझे मेरे सपनों से दूर कर देती है,
और हर सुबह मेरे हसीन सपनो को तोड़ देती है,
धीरे धीरे ये आग बुझने लगी है,
पर जब देखता हूँ तो मेरी कहानी अब भी अधूरी सी है,
और जैसे कुछ कहानियाँ अक्सर ख़त्म हो जाती है मंज़िल से पहले,
बस एक डर है कहीं ये आग ना बुझ जाए मेरे जलने से पहले…
-N2S
20012012