Immigrant travails - Part 2

Years rolled along, career stabilized
Enchanted motherland called out
Memories gushed of pristine beaches
Innocent childhood dreams returned
Of days and years bygone
Remembered my grandfathers’ words
Cows that remain unsold he had said
In the grandest of hometowns’ fairs
Have to be sneakily led, far and wide!


True Grandpa, I had told him then
There is an economy of sorts
So I go where demand exists
For skills I have gained and refined
Now uprooted from my adopted land
Sweet success, my NRI friends celebrated
Proud and envious, they said in joyous tones
A blue moon opportunity to savor and rejoice!
Our very own, motherland!


But now, why do I still feel lost?
Same words now seem to sting and prick
Same old trust seems harder to come by
Real meanings vaporize like clouds of steam
May be.. I hear their soft whispers
No car, works dawn to dusk, travels afar
And yet can’t pick him out in a crowd
May be, like us… they say in hushed voices
He doesn’t ‘need’ a job anymore!


Still feels like neither here, nor there
Something must be wrong with him
Not one of us anymore?, they loudly wonder
Trying in vain I struggle to understand
This stereotyping gone berserk
Simple hopeful words for positive change
Twisted as gargantuan ridicules
Still orphaned, I wonder if I’d ever
Feel nostalgic about ‘sweet’ homeland again


Locking effervescent memories in cold storage
Look forward, ignoring prudish arrogance
Listening back to childhood voices
Seeing beauty in relationships from the
depths of unadulterated memories
Overlooking the now lost magic of innocence
In grown up midlife masks of utopian facades’
I wonder standing on this midlife bridge
Will it be green with age as we reach the other side?


Original (part -1) one is here

Seductive Realities

Countless colors shade my heart
Colors that prying eyes can never see
Hiding in plain sight, worlds’ apart
Magical mirrors, confounding realities

Countless colors shade my heart
Colors with which brittle minds disagree
Forever elusive to reign by thought
Seductive nevertheless, a perpetual mystery

Countless colors shade my heart
Between chasms of vast extremities
Like the morn’ dew, my dreams did depart
Into thin air, for peace and serendipity

Countless colors shade my heart..
Countless colors shade my heart..

..ah..


.. Motivated by a write I read somewhere else. It is indeed very hard to read a fellow humans' mind, especially if they are depressed. However much you think you know / understand the person, it becomes very difficult to sometimes understand their underlying rationale on choices they you are damn sure that they dont normally make.