Health museum

The baby proved useful right away.
It is displayed at the museum
in a jar of clear Formalin.
The mother is allowed a free entry.
Once a week she comes and observes
the floating, growth-stilled piece of her.
Her only child.

She was worried that her child was lonely there.
No more now, as two more jars are added.
The children face each other as if talking.
From womb to womb, jar to jar
through an invisible umbilical cord.

Salsa

A few steps forward
and a few backward.
Salsa of life.

Reality

If commenting is a must
You are nothing but dust.
Scurrying rats
you and your thoughts.
Nibbling on the ends of
the gunny bags of reality.

Moving on

There was no drama
It was just smooth
This breakup of mine
with reality.
I withdrew like the snail
with all the softness
into a hardened shell
carried on my back.
A slow and unnoticed retreat.
But when it comes to moving on
I have the pace of a rabbit.
Burrowing here and burrowing there
there are holes dug all over me.
Voids which tunnel through
past and bend into future.
Somewhere in these gaps
I exist as the darkness
as a seeming shallowness.

Rain, go away; No, please come back

If I have to meet someone from the past
I would want it to be myself.
It is Narcissistic, I know
But how great it is
On a rainy day
to fall into the bed of past
and rest for a while
underneath the layers of time.

Time often leaves me
dry and disappointed
like a failed monsoon.
I pray for it to stop for a while
but it moves on like a school bus
carrying a hundred joys
to order and discipline.

Incessant rain is a recess
where time comes to a stop.
I remember it to be long back
when we made paper boats
that sailed safely till the canal
and joined others into time.
Only to meet me today, as glassy memories
circling in the eyes, before they are sucked
into the vortex of time.

Power-cut debates

Over the years, like old clothes
Our arguments develop holes.
You would have made your point across
won the argument for the day in college.
But now when you look back on the debates
there are gaps staring at you.
Gaps that were once covered with emotion.
You have moved on since then
From the twinkle in the eye to bifocals.

Flying colors

Sometimes the wind is such that
it doesn't tear away the kite
instead stalls the flying colors.