Rights and Wrongs

Freedom is like an unused space in a room
without which one feels too cramped.
Only When we are cornered
there are thoughts sneezing out of the settled dust.

Our mute resistance against the infringement
takes the form of conversations over dinner.
They are passed on to children, through the
this-is-how-the-world-is stories.

Let's break the evasion
Let's clean up the dust before we are cornered.
There are rights to be exercised
and there are wrongs to be exorcised.

Depths

There is a refractive shallowness in depth
in the form of disconnect between us.
Things are not same for the fish in the pond
and the hand that throws crumbs of bread.

Deep waters is an experience
but still it appears conquerable like infinity
symbolized in a sleeping eight, a missing link in
our experience with the whole.

In Dry Land

the wrinkled are scattered in
parleys on the pyols, boasting
about the children in the city.

their furrowed faces are moist
with sadness of separation
and happiness of escape from the cracked soil.

they are left behind as forgotten milestones
bent and supported by sticks.


(*pyol - Raised platform in front of a house)

Blinds

With age, we accept things like the static on a radio
and the constant drone of traffic outside.

Words, actions and even thoughts
are used as blinds to keep off the outside view

A child's tenacity of bursting birthday balloons
gives way to mute resignation.

Outside the cubes of existence there are phantom powers
that can be burst easily like those balloons
and the 'tup' sounds would shatter our worlds only for a moment.

There is never a right moment for things
but there are right things for the moment
So, shoo away the blinds and look out.

Ice-cream

I knew, that after sometime
sadness doesn't make sense.
So I went my way, had an ice-cream
and melted the sadness under the sun.

But my friend who had a way with words
said he would go out and make it a point to the world
He moved lot of people to tears.

Now he is famous and all worried
as his tears vaporize
into words in the limelight.

He misses the evenings on the bench
with wetted palms.

Force

The force of longing increases
with the distance between us
and When we are at the opposite ends
the entire world is wrapped in our feelings.

we come together like the ends of an elastic band
and rediscover the texture of the relation
like the re-formed print.

Trapped for long inside love
we create music
out of anxiety between us.

Assurances

Thousand assurances are pressed
in the creased smile of grand mother
and the coconut offered to God by grandfather.

Later, in the diaries that are written
and the anecdotes shared
There are those assurances
that you are safe.

There was enough running before hugging you
with an affectionate briskness.
But during those anxious moments
everything was burning,like the blazing sun.

Pigeon Holes

An octopus with thousand eyes and wooden eyelids
The pigeon holes in the night.
There are many shades in them
green, blue, yellow and white.

Lives are contained and
locked up in them
like the meaning in some words.

Every morning there is
a black smoke from the kiln
signaling fresh set of bricks
for the cemetery.

The warmth of the pigeon hole
is a hollowness in the whole
It is soon filled
by the black smoke, tilting westward.

Ode to Donkeys

Donkeys cross the road better than us
without wandering here and there.
They are never fickle in their gait
They are just straight.

They are not smart asses
but are deeply thoughtful.
Sometimes, they drop shit oddly on the roads
we only hurl it against each other.

Lately, I see people transfixed by these donkeys
but they never take notice.
They just proceed objectively like
the heroes from great novels.

Life and Death

Are two bulbs of a sand clock
and we slip like the sand.

We die as we live;
As each grain feels the motion
there are some already pushed out.

We only fear the fall
death is that void on which
the slipped sand has no claim.

So what do we pray for then?
Just a smoother transition.

Pulp

The sadness that grips us
is layered with smiles
as a glossy cover, binding a dull print.

Happiness is seen blurred and confusing
through the translucence of time.

The yellow on the old books
never sticks to us;
Memories are eaten away by mites
till the pages crumble at our slightest thoughts.

The joy of the irreversibility of time binds us
to the memories and we fight with mites
for our share of the pulp.