Sitting here, uselessly staring at my monitor
Flirting with Mouse, clicking here and there
And letting my mind wander somewhere
Far-far away, but reaching nowhere.

I wonder what is it I am waiting for
With lowered curtains, closed door,
A miracle won't popup from the screen
And God would not let a blessing pour.

--

Was unable to take the above one further. But it was a result of another curiosity (besides writing a poem, as such). For quite sometime now, I have been wondering over how main-stream poetry adopts those things as symbols which are new for a while, but then start invading the lives of people like several things in the past have done. Initially the symbols that the new things represent might look out of place in poetry. For example, computers. For most part, the computer, as a symbol, has not really entered the main-stream poetry presently. It is largely limited to parodies or jokes. And while we would be perfectly comfortable reading a love-poetry mentioning letters, wouldn't it feel slightly odd to see an e-mail mentioned? Would not feel quite poetic, would it? (Am I generalizing? Well, let me say that I would not feel quite comfortable.)

But then with time, it certainly does enter the family of symbols. At some point of time the rails would have been a similar invader, but shall we be able to count today the number of poems with sentiments linked to trains (considering even just the context of Hindi poetry). Include movie songs (well serious ones, I will leave "nau-se-barah" kind out of this discussion), and it will be evident, even if you are not very well-conversed with Hindi poetry.

First time this idea came to me, while listening to the song "Humne Sanam Ko Khat Likha" sometime. The whole song describes a situation where the lover writes a letter to his beloved, but does not know the correct address. He puts some address, prays that the letter reaches to the right person and waits for years for a reply (literal translation of "barson jawabe yaar ka, dekha kiye hum raasta"). But finally the letter comes back because the address was wrong ("ik din wo khat waapas mila, aur dakiye ne ye kaha,'is daak-khane mein nahin, saare zamane mein nahin, koi shahar is naam ka, koi gali is naam kee, koi sanam is naam ka'")! Now, consider a situation in the context of the youth of present day. What the person will try to guess is her e-mail id (i.e. if he can not do a profile search on yahoo, or finger on a server (in the context of an intranet ;) ), write a mail, and if the id happens to be wrong, he would know it in almost a few minutes :-D

What would a similar love song of the future be like? Any attempts? :-)

And BTW, does the attempt at poetry in the beginning of this post look too weird?

Categories: Own-Poetry, Thoughts