From the End to a New Beginning

The end approaches.
You can see it coming from a distance.
There’s still some way to go,
but there not much time left,
and you begin to wonder…

How many summers will you see
before the long winter overtakes your soul?
How many times will you see the sun rise
before you see that last sunset on the seashore of eternity?

For when you take a deep breath,
and close your eyes one last time,
What will you see
when you awaken on the other side?

Memories both sweet and sour
fade away at that last moment
when all you have and all you can
is manage but one last analysis
of the days gone by,
of those very memories
To prize and look upon your souvenirs
One last time

What lies behind this veil of darkness
We cannot know for sure
we can speculate, anticipate
But we cannot see it –
Until for the very first time
we enter it through that very veil
that hides us from the glories or horrors
that it so earnestly shields.

It all comes down to the quiet at the end.
And in those last moments as the dust settles,
as you prepare yourself to cross over
to your final home
As you make that final analysis,
reminiscence and nostalgia will meet one last time,
and a lifetime of experience will suggest:

That life was all about choices,
and that there were always
atleast two paths at every turn.
The paths you took led you to your destiny.
The paths you took became your purpose.
The paths you took led you
to this final walkway on the brink of life.

And so you begin to tread slowly
upon this final path of life,
and that’s when you will think
about the two inevitable possibilities –
Will this final walk lead to your coronation?
Or will it give way at the end to a dark bottomless ocean?

And that’s when you will realise
that it was never about all those choices.
You will realise that it wasn’t
about any of those paths you took.
You will realise that
it was all about that One Choice
which defined all other choices.
It was all about The Way
that led through the narrowest paths in life.

But why realise it then,
when you can realise all this now?
Why regret not having made The Choice,
when you can do it now?
Why cruise through life on the broad highways
and crash into a wall of dark nothingness?

For in that last moment,
Hope is better than regret
Light is better than darkness
And a lifetime of wrongs
could’ve been set right by just One Choice.

That Choice is Jesus.
His Cross helps you cross over
with Hope into the presence of eternal Love!
And all you need is Faith.

Choose to have faith.
Make that Choice today
for there’s no better time than right now.
And it’s never too late until it’s all over.
But when your moment comes,
how will the story unfold?
Choose to live happily ever after.
And ride off into the sunset
to a new beginning!

My Lines Don’t Rhyme (Spoken Word)

Is it a coincidence and that Life and Love
Sound strikingly similar,
Almost to the point that they rhyme?
Love and Life. What is one without the other?

My lines don’t rhyme…
But maybe I’ll try one more time

Before all of us on this journey start
Let me make it clear these lines don’t come from the heart
Thoughts inside my head fly like dart
But these rhymes don’t do justice on their part

They say penny for your thoughts but I don’t make a dime
Cuz I’m so constrained by this annoying rhyme
So I’m gonna do us all a favour and let this drop
That’s it, you heard me right. This is where the rhymes stop

My lines don’t rhyme
And they really don’t
Cuz I think I made a typo
Right at the start
I took a pen and paper
And as I put them one on each other
My thoughts choked altogether
And these thoughts – they conspired against me
and they made me realize
What I should’ve said all along
My LIFE don’t rhyme

My life is a poem
And so is yours (And yours, and yours)
Now the thing about poets
Is that we never know what they mean
For poets do not write to be understood

And as I sat prisoner
to these thoughts one evening
as the sun went down
I realized I was writing a poem with my life
That could not be understood
I knew for a fact that no one else did
Cuz I myself couldn’t

There was no rhyme or reason
For I just kept writing and living and writing and living
And the two were so intertwined with each other
That I realized that one was just as meaningless as the other

The more I made the lines
Of my life rhyme with each other
The more I realized that
They made less sense
The more I forced the rhymes
The lesser I could communicate

It took me a while
To understand what these rhymes were
What was I injecting into my life
In the hope of making it more musical?
What were these rhymes that seemed to
Make my life have a certain ring to it
While in reality, it made it just too simple and flat?

What were these rhymes that
Exchanged the transcendence of complexity
For the numbness of simplicity?

What were these rhymes
That convinced me to include them
In order to make my life, my poem interesting
When clearly it only did the opposite what
I intended it to do?

And as the sun dipped further below the horizon,
I was jolted to reality
As I came to realize
What these rhymes were

Is it a coincidence and that Life and Love
Sound strikingly similar,
Almost to the point that they rhyme?
Love and Life. What is one without the other?

The sun goes down
I open my eyes
The whole world sleeps
But only I rise

Let me hold the suspense a bit longer
I feel a little wise
What I didn’t understand
I now fully realize

That I look myself in the eyes
Cut myself down to size
Stifle my inner cries
And tell myself I’ve won the prize

But I RISE
Through my own deception,
I see the lies
And with this revelation,
My deception dies

For there are many rhymes that distract
But only one rhyme is true.
And it is but revealed to a few
You might think this is new
But its always been hiding in plain view

Don’t you see it?
Love and Life.
What’s one without the other?
Love and Life.
That’s the only true rhyme.

And somewhere
In the depths of your heart
You can hear them chime.

And now, my lines rhyme.

Hourglass

“Time is not measured by clocks. It’s measured by the number of souls that go down to their final rest.”

 

With a little beating heart

and a marred soul,

We start our journey here on earth.

All we like grains of sand in an hourglass

Begin at the top

and slowly make our way down.

 

Down and down each one goes

To the place where time stands still.

Down and down each one goes,

Destined from the start to fall.

Down and down each one goes,

One grain at a time…

 

No matter how hard we try,

We cannot reverse our own direction;

We move down against our will

to be lost on the other side of the fall.

 

And with each passing moment,

the bottom of the hourglass fills up.

The top half empties away,

one grain at a time.

One moment at a time.

Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock…

 

It’s only a matter of time before

you tumble down to the edge,

All the way to the point of no return…

And just as you fall

from the top half to the bottom,

You realise that you have no hope left.

You cannot save yourself.

 

And that’s when a hand reaches out

And plucks you out of free-fall.

Just you. Just one grain.

Not picked at random,

but chosen by design

even before the beginning of time.

 

Unconditionally saved,

you are taken out of the hourglass

To rest in the scarred palm of your Saviour –

In the company of other handpicked grains of sand.

 

And from the safety of our new abode,

As we gaze upon

the hourglass in which we once resided,

We are confounded!

For we now realise that our savior

had to break His precious hourglass,

thus scarring his hands for eternity –

Just to save us from what we deserve.

 

What are we,

that we must be thus saved?

For despite all our crowns,

and all our glories,

In the grand scheme of things,

we are nothing but dust!

 

Yes, dust.

Pure unequivocal dust.

Just dust.

 

“And our Savior turns dust to pearls.”

The Lighthouse

I wake up.

I find myself down by the seashore
I look behind only to see an endless trail.
One set of footprints dot the sand –
The only evidence of a solitary wanderer

Where am I going?
Where have I come from?
But both these questions are eclipsed
by the biggest one of all – why?

I see only a portion of the journey –
A little ahead, a little behind,
And a lone Lighthouse on the horizon.
The finite tries to comprehend the infinite.

My thoughts are disrupted by crashing waves
The surf laps at my feet, dancing to a tune
I look at the footprints I’ve left behind
The water just erases them in its wake.

I change course, head out to sea
I fight the waves, walk in further.
I’m about to prevail, when I’m pulled under
Deeper and deeper I plunge into the abyss.

I open my eyes, find myself in a void
Empty space all around, nowhere to go
No point of reference, just complete blackness
I start moving in one direction, no goal in sight.

I wade through space, then I swim
My destination is as mysterious as my location
Am I the seeker? Or am I the lost?
Realization dawns – both are equally terrifying.

Frantic, I look all around as dizziness creeps in
The nothingness around me is maddening
Absolute absence of anything – except me.
Only I inhabit this nothingness, or does it inhabit me?

Suddenly a light shines through!
The bright Light is blinding –
I am blinded to the nothingness around,
While my own is enlighteningly illuminated.

 

From infinity to infinity the Light shines on
Shines all around, dispels the darkness around
Shines through me, and shows my own.
And now I move toward the Light.

As I approach the Light, I understand this journey
The sand on which I walked were the circumstances of life
The footprints were my actions – none left a lasting impact
The tides of time came and washed them away.

I fought against time, but in vain.
Who can stand against the ravages of time?
Into nothingness I quickly plummeted
Doomed to be disremembered by history.

In nothingness I pathetically wallowed
No direction I found, for I looked within.
What I saw outside was a mere reflection of the inside
I was going in circles, from nothingness to nothingness.

Then the Light shone through –
and gave me the wisdom and direction I needed.
The Light gave me purpose and a hope.
The Light gave me life.

As I consider this, my reality trembles, my views quake
I fall through the cracks of my own conscience
I rise up from nothingness to the surface.
I float to the top; the waves deposit me on the shore

I open my eyes once more and look up
Weary, yet determined with hopeful vigour,
I set out for the Light –
That ancient Lighthouse that guards the horizon.

I know it will take a lifetime to reach there,
But the journey and the destination are worth every stride.
The Light guides those very steps that I take to reach it
The Light conquers time and space. The Light conquers me.

The Light is Love.

I reach the Light. I wake up.

Here Ends Another Day

G.K. Chesterton once penned a beautiful poem titled “Evening”. These simple five lines that constitute this poem have inspired others to write much more:

Here ends another day
During which I have had eyes, ears, hands
And the great world round me;
Tomorrow begins another day.
Why am I allowed two?

This profound quote immediately evokes, in most that come across it, a sense of undeservedness. Upon dwelling on this realization, we would inevitably come to a conclusive feeling of gratitude.
We are all the more thankful for what we have when we realize that we have done nothing to obtain or even deserve it – even though we might at times think we have earned it.

Often, we expect certain things merely for the fact that we have been routinely expecting and receiving (the vicious cycle repeats) the things we consider mundane in our daily lives. It is true that we realize the worth of something only when we lose it. These mundane things often seem to be the most indispensable.

So when we come across that quote, why do we stop to think? It’s because we know that we are impaired without the commonplace in our lives. It’s because we know that there are others who aren’t as favored as we are. It’s because somewhere deep we know that we are recipients of unmerited blessing.
So it is common that such a realization would inspire gratitude. Most just leave it at that. They are thankful and think no further about it. They are thankful for something, but who or what are they thankful to? Gratitude must be thought of as a vector. Not only does it possess magnitude, it also has direction.
Therefore, by definition, gratitude is always directed at someone, something or some situation. However, in this case, a simple observation would lead us to understand that the latter two cannot be the recipients of our gratitude. It must therefore follow that someone is supposed to the beneficiary of our gratitude.

This person, to whom we are indebted must be, logically speaking, greater than his gifts – of which we are the undeserving recipients. When we consider these gifts themselves, we would come to a clearer conclusion as to what this person is greater than. We see the most obvious – the magnificent world around us, the stars in the night sky, the intricate design of our bodies. Then we come to the more unassuming – our unique personality, the delicate balance of nature, the impossibility of the existence of our universe by mere chance, and the most unobtrusive of all – life itself!

We know no greater gift than the gift of life, yet we did nothing to inherit it. We thus conclude that our benefactor is greater than life itself. Since we know of nothing greater than life, and thus nothing else to compare Him to, we can logically conclude that He is infinitely greater than all things known and unknown and is, by virtue of His gifting life, greater than eternity itself. He brings and takes out of existence everything and everyone.

But what are we? We carry burdens and cares that seem so important to us, yet miss out on the most amazing gift of our existence. How insignificant our troubles seem in the grand scheme of things! Yet there is someone who is infinitely bigger than all this – infinitely bigger than all we have ever known. So really, what place do we hold in this playground we call our universe?
When we ponder deeper about this matter, we inevitably discern that we are no more than specks of dust on a barren rock orbiting an insignificant star in the corner of a moderately large galaxy tucked away in a seemingly forgotten corner of an infinitely enormous universe.

We thus come to two seemingly conflicting realizations – that our gratitude is (or should be) directed towards a certain ‘someone’ who is infinitely larger than anything we can ever imagine and that we are so insignificant that we might as well be non-existent. So the question really is why should someone who is so much bigger than we are even care to be bothered with the details of our lives?

This conflict of conclusions can be resolved by just one simple word. Grace.

This is of course, inexplicable. Why should we be the recipients of this unmerited favor? A casual read of our recent history would betray the fact that not only are we undeserving, but we deserve to be punished for squandering our most precious gift of all.
Yet, we find that we still continue to receive this grace. This could only be the result of one thing – love. Unconditional love.

Yes, God loves us. His love for us is shown in the most obvious and the most hidden intricacies of life. And where His love flows, so does His grace – it permeates all.

So at last, having followed a trail of inevitable questions, logical conclusions and enlightened convictions, we come back to our original conundrum – why do we have the things we do not deserve? The answer is as elegantly simple as it is overwhelmingly confounding – it is only because of His grace which is the consequence of His eternal love for us.

And if He has enabled us to live this short life here on earth in abundance, how much more would His love for us have done to ensure our abundant life in eternity?

The answer to that question is worth pursuing!

Who I Am Makes A Difference

[Essay written for English Project in 9th grade]

This project is based on a true story in which a teacher gives her students blue ribbons. She tells her students to honour some person with the extra blue ribbons she gives them. One teenager gives his blue ribbon to a top senior executive. He in turn gave a blue ribbon to his boss. The boss in turn honoured his son with a blue ribbon which prevented him from committing suicide.
I thought a lot about who to honour with the blue ribbon which I got. Many people have made a difference in my life, so it was a hard decision to take about whom to honour. Finally, after a lot of thinking, I decide to honour my mother.
My mother has made a HUGE difference in my life. She has taught me so many valuable lessons and corrected me whenever I did something wrong. SHE MADE WHAT I AM TODAY.
The day I got the sheet of paper with the story written in it, I showed it to my mom and told her to read it. She read the story and told me that it was a very touching story. Then, she went about doing her work. After some time, I presented her with a blue ribbon and pinned it on her dress. She looked at it and was . . . . . . Speechless!! She was so surprised that I honoured her with the blue ribbon. She was so proud, happy . . . . She had all the positive emotions that you could ever think of. She told EVERYONE what happened and why she had a blue ribbon pinned on her dress. This is how I honoured her with the blue ribbon.
The reason I gave the blue ribbon to my mother was for all the LOVE that she has showered on me from the time I was born till now, even this very moment. She has also protected me when I was small-and even now-and she has also CARED for me all these fourteen years of my life. She has ENCOURAGED me when I thought I couldn’t do a certain thing. She has also CONGRATULATED me every time I achieved something. She CORRECTED me when I did something I wasn’t supposed to do. There are so many more reasons why I honoured her. In short, I would like to say that I honoured her because of all the constant love, protection, care, encouragement, praise, correction and for all that she is to me. I really couldn’t have got a better mom.
I really enjoyed doing this project. The topic for the project “WHO I AM MAKES A DIFFERENCE” was a creative one. When I first heard the story, I felt very emotional. I also understood that recognizing a person or honouring him/her in whatever little way you can, can change that person forever. And that one person can be a huge impact in society. I also enjoyed the part where I got to honour a person. In my case it was my mom. While doing this project, I got to know several new things about my mom. This project was really a blessing to me and my mother. I really thank my English teacher Mrs. Manjula Belliappa for giving me this opportunity to do such a unique project which is so different from all the other projects that I have ever done.
By doing this project I have learnt many valuable lessons which I will cherish for life. But the most important lesson I have learnt through this project was-

WHO I AM MAKES A DIFFERENCE!