Light

Light

I sit here in my room, at an open window

Lots of lovely sunlight enters the room

I have some deep relation with this light,

It has been one of the most precious gifts to me by life,

I playfully give it the name of a beautifier for

it beautifies anything it falls upon:

It makes gems out of water waves,

It gives colors to the lovely flowers and birds,

It makes the green leaves sparkle…

There is something in this light,

that lets us believe that we all are every moment being showered by something divine,

in front of which our small troubles are but nothing.

This light is melodious,

and sometimes I look upon what it gives to me and my eyes become watery,

for how can I ever pay back the love and warmth and infinite little pleasures it gives me.

Sometimes, I feel that all that is good is light and my heart is love and love is light…

-Manan sheel.

Ours is a beautiful, wonderful world..

Let us suppose a world in which everyone knows everyone else’s reality. A world in which everything is crystal clear. Everything is insanely sane and perfect. I want to know if love would grow in such a world. Such a world won’t have place for poetry, that is certain. For poetry loves to praise the imperfections and there would be no imperfections. There should be love in that world. Pure? Yes, it would be pure, almost distilled. As pure as the cloudless sky. It would be perfect too. But will anyone enjoy that love? The enjoyment of love is in relating. Relating the heavenly to the mundane. Relating the skies to the dirt. Love is enjoyed when it is played like a violin by the hands of metaphors and similes. When all the things are perfect and heavenly, the heaven will lose its value. It would become a boredom. The most boring place of this universe. That place would be like a cemetery with no person singing and dancing his sorrows away. For there would be no sorrows. So, you see, a sorrow-less world is imperfect. So, how is it perfect? Our whole life, we do nothing but strive for such an imperfect so-called perfect world, of which there is no need. Everything IS beautiful, yes, this should be the word, not perfection. We need to have some pain and passion to sing and dance. We need to have something which does not seem good and perfect (although it is) so that some writers like me can put their tongues in their cheeks and write about, so that it would be a matter to make movies on, to write songs about. The world is real, yet it is the imaginations associated with it, the imaginations of wonder, that make it a place worth living.

-Manan sheel.