May I beg your pardon

That day I was waiting in a bus stop

An old woman came to me to seek alms

I refused to give her money
and gestured with my head
to say her to move away from that place

Then came my friend

As being observed my gestures
he said to me
“Yesterday you went to her sister
begging for data to do your
poverty research”

I was not in a mood to argue.
Still, I said to him
“I was intended to help her sister to reduce
their burden of poverty”

My friend had an unbearable smile
and said
“This lady was also intended to help you to reduce
your burden of being rich”

I became restless and uttered
“I am not rich”

He then patted me on my back
and said
“Her sister is also not poor”

“Who decides that?”, I asked

“Not you indeed”, he answered

“Why not I?”, I was furious

“Because, you survive upon the inequalities
and you will never dare to
endeavour towards equalising”,
he was still calm…

fear factor

That day we were talking about fear

I said to him in a shadowed voice
“I am afraid only when I am alone”

He started laughing and
finally when he stopped,
he said,
“I am alone only when I am afraid”

Unlike mine, his voice was
so bright then

unexpect the expected

Once we were about to
cross a metropolitan road.

A vehicle then passed suddenly.
It would have hit us if we
failed to move back a little.

“Expect the unexpected, says Heraclitus”
I said to him with a smile

He thought for a while and
asked me a simple question,
“But dear, how to unexpect the expected?”
which is yet to be answered.

beware of the dog

Last evening we were
walking down to eat some
‘dahi vadas’

There was this gentleman’s house
on the way,
Mr. M.N. Mohanty.

A well furnished house
with decorative garden
in the front yard .

There was a sign board
on the main gate
‘Beware of the dog’

I surprisingly asked my friend
“Why should I be beware of his dog?”

He silently answered
“Because the dog never bites him
but you, if…”
he stopped for a while

“If?”
I stressed my question
as he continued,
“if you pretend to be a stranger…”

parts and whole

My friend few days ago
bought a new camera
Sony Cyber-shot 7.2 megapixel
3x optical zoom with 1 GB memory

He then started clicking
each and everything that
he confronts with

Sun, flower, sky, clouds,
trees, leaves, puppies, dust bin,
tube light, ceiling fan, knife, kitchen,
tomato, spider, the list goes
so…………………. long

I asked him why does he do this,
indeed, the purpose

He then told me that
we need to learn to appreciate
the beauty of all the parts

‘Parts are really beautiful’
was his ultimate message

“If the parts are beautiful,
why can’t the whole also be beautiful?”,
I wanted to trap him

He smiled and said
“ That’s what I mean dear,
if you want to appreciate
the beauty of the whole,
you should first accept that
all parts are equally beautiful”

I was almost about to faint

He then advised me to get
a Sony Cyber-shot
to understand his statement

... dialogue with my friend starts

I have a friend
as all of you have
we always happen to be
questions and answers
and when we are together
there are only exclamations

I just thought of sharing some of our dialogues
as it would start a dialogue within yourself and
you would also get such a friend
in your journey

The dialogue starts

... another farewell

The tree has grown
Without I’m watering it
Still, its felling
By an unknown axe
Reminds me of
The rainless days…

Strange familiarities again…