Unliberated

Met few mothers

Minding their children. 

Bound and blinded by love

They pitied their husbands

Who were off to their sports

Contrast

There was a time when I scurried

Books of poetry as I worried

Through the corridors of youth

Trying to get to the truth 

Now  I carry the lines in my head 

Noting the worldly ways instead

My words were plenty earlier

But have now become wearier 

Life has taught 

the most trite lesson

That like everything 

poetry is not everything

Earlier, poetry bloomed everywhere 

like the giggles of newly weds 

Now the lines lie next to each other 

in tired marital beds.

The Boundary

I draw a boundary beyond which

I have only indifference to others' suffering
I wake up and think of the universe
And this boundary stretches to the slums of infinity.
By mid day, I feel lucky that something horrible

has bypassed me and my family.

It has struck others beyond the boundary.

Clearly, my boundary has shrunk.
By night, the boundary only extends to the immediate vicinity
To someone whom I can touch and hold
And in the darkest hour, the boundary shrinks

to a point deep inside me. 

It is indifferent to my own sufferings.

Lectures me on the why-not side of probability.

Limited Vocabulary

An unexpected rain enthralls.

A lapwing repeatedly calls.

Its speech surrounds my nest.

I think limited vocabulary is the best.

Thorny side up

Sometimes I say things I don't mean 
At times I mean things that I don't say
You may have realised by now
That it is difficult to get away. 

I hide smiles behind tears 
and tears behind smiles 
You might have already perceived 
These are my prominent styles. 

Without me reminding so late
You know that life is a bed 
of Roses with thorny side up
But there is nothing to dread. 

It is all temporary 
till it becomes permanent. 
It is all body
till it becomes parchment. 

To my reader across the seas

I can rain somewhere near you 
Make a point that is less distant. 
But this is not how gravity works for me
It forces me to search, with a cursory lamp 
in the narrow passes of inspiration 
Leads me across thoughtless plains
into the forests of silence where 
I hear only the sound of my breathing
Before I suddenly reach a magical place 
Called the ending, which could be this 
Or wherever you stopped reading. 

Mrs. Cinderella Prince

Now she needs kinder shoes

That comfort her like never before

She doesn't let the prince choose

But leaves a note outside her door. 

She puts her faith in the fairy elves

Waits patiently in the kingly castle 

For the shoes to walk by themselves

Without carrying a princely hassle. 

She wants shoes in which she can stay

Not the ones that'll take her away. 

In the right light

I read something that nudges me

to look outside the window

or imagine somewhere other than now.

I think about the infinity of things

and the endless horizon of possibilities.

I imagine the chains that they are all bound by.

I feel the chain of events reaching me

and wetting my feet with experience.

I am rewired at that moment.

I am put in the cross-hairs of my own thoughts.  

The muse

The muse car-pools with me

and is silent for most part of the journey.

It adjusts its gaze occasionally to see

if I am noticing how things can be.

But I am just focused on my ends and

what it all means to me and the world.

It doesn’t disappear yet, it waits

for the moment when the windows darken,

the wipers flail and everything is washed

in the rain, and I observe something

that rings bells: bells of charm and not alarm.

And the inner leaves rustle in a metaphorical breeze.  

The expanding universe

The fact that universe is expanding

has trickled down to me.

It has had no effect on my goings-on

as a normal citizen.

The car works just fine,

the apples still fall to the ground

as they did before and elsewhere.

But now there is a certain unease

when I write that you are moon-faced or

compare you to some other heavenly body.

I would like to expand too and compare you

to the universe and all its complexities.

A drunken nod to the Classics

Long after you’ve read them, the scene

is still playing slothfully before your eyes.

A clear stage and a clever dialogue subtly hint

that something is wrong with the world.

A character is shown a long, slow mirror,

long enough to observe the folds in the

clothing or even count the number of lights

in the chandelier, precariously hung above him.

The story grows a beard, turns into a cape

follows you like a heroic shadow.

You ingest everything about it

so much that you wander in Wuthering Heights.

You tend to have Great Expectations about everything

leading to Pride first and then Prejudice.

Your adventures into wonderlands

end in abandonment in a lonely island.

You go through War and Peace and at every

turn of phrase, you expect Sense and Sensibility.

You call out for help to Emma and Anna but alas!

they’ve all left, without a word, with The woman in White.

You wonder about the balance in this Crime and punishment,

let out a sigh and suffer the Trial. Despite all this, you are

still Quixotic and dream of a Brave new world. 

Silence

Always found between the lines

it is a slip stream of consciousness.

It sneaks into a home

while everyone else leaves for work.

It is a witness much different

from the usual silent witness.

It is the only one not to miss

the beautiful sunrises and sunsets

and everything in between.

It makes complete sense by itself.

It’s that distant feeling I get

when I write my answers in the present

to the questions of future. 

You have a history

You have a history.
Someone resembling you
did something terrible and their
stinky sinful clothes stuck on you
since then forward, onwards and thereafter.

You have a history
and someone whom you knew
rebelled against the order of things
and you are stuck in that place
eve since, forever and wherever.

You have a history
and someone in your name
started a war, filled his own pockets
and you did nothing. It’s your fault
from then on and till eternity.

You have a history
and your bloodline will be crooked.
It’ll destroy the world from being the
happy place that it already is.

You have a history
and you can’t hide from it.
It is sewn into your skin
Imprinted  on the eye balls
Written all over
that no help will come. 

Arriving early

They arrived early

for the anniversary dinner.

Even ahead

of some of the cutlery at the table.

They are here

well before the children that will follow.

They are here

taking one step at a time.

They are here

like the will before the way. 

Pecking order

I work in a glass house.

An old granny-type of building

Peering through its thick glasses.

Inside, I peck at the keyboard trying to make

bread and butter via a computer.

There is this regular visitor

that never misses a day of my work:

A bird pecking at the glass window.

It must’ve confused it for another bird

Must’ve wanted to kiss it up-close.

Or does it suspect it to be a still pool of water?

A taut vertical lake that is devoid of any ripples.

While holding tight onto the twig it chose

It seems to observe me for a long time.

Trying to make sense of this

part of the world before flying away.

Chewing one end of a pencil I try to note

everything down and rumple it up at you.

Knowing well that your heart is a frozen, faraway lake.

The lines of history

Lines of fate

Lines of authority

Lines of events

Battle lines, Bloodlines

Front lines, Headlines

Lines of graves and prayers

Lines in a textbook and on water.

Driving lessons

The ABC of driving, the instructor tells me

are the accelerator, brake and clutch.

And warns that if I accelerate alone and don’t brake

then we all have to clutch at something to hold on to.

But soon I realize that the car is not capable of all that.

The only thing that works perfectly is the heating.

The rest of the alphabet of driving, he says, is to watch

other people on the road - both moving and standing still.

Only when I am at the wheel I see all these unnecessary people

on the road whom I would like to delete from the scene.

Honking can do this trick, he instructs, if the sound

is loud enough to be an extension of my disgust. 

Report from the hills

The view of the distant snow-clad mountains

made up for the lack of any paintings on the walls.

It was snowing during spring which the locals said

was very rare - as rare as our vacations.

We did nothing during the entire stay.

This is totally different from the nothing of the plains.

Wrapped in fleece blankets we looked like sketch pens

tightly packed in twos for warmth and ease.

The next day, the sky was clear and we could see

the mountains shake the snow off.

While we struggled to keep it within us

as we went downhill. 

From ourselves

From the baby pool of inconveniences and regrets

that I swim in I can only wish a happy new year

without knowing what you went through.

Just assuming your shoes are as comfortable as mine.

From the ordinariness for which I am thankful

I foolishly greet that your wishes should fulfill

without an inkling, that your wish is to not exist

at all to escape the recurring conflict and pain.

I put a clip of memory on the moth-like moments

that outlasted their lifetimes without realizing

the crumble of their fragile wings. A glass heart

after all holds my happiness frozen in its step.

The toss of time and the winds of change and

all the idioms of passing are sheltered in greetings.

But you, you are the one searching for shelter

in the dark, escaping the fireworks of a civil war.

The turn of a year, what does it mean, for you are

already hallucinating in hunger and wishing for a

random wander of kindness which by a remote

chance might save us all from ourselves. 


(Syria)

Of foxes and jackals

Foxes know many things
I am sure that they know this too.
Cutting the corners of cunningness
they are the custodians of worldly ways.
Jackals too belong in this august company.
This is a reaction to those two particular
jackals spinning off tales in the Panchatantra.
They've wandered again into my psyche long after
that childish curiosity about talking animals.
This time too they were deep in conversation
about not just what is good but what is possible.
They sneak in everywhere I look or overlook.
Two people talking, I can only imagine their bushy tales.
Mysterious Once-upon-a-times created even out of boredom.
Their conversation ricochets across centuries
taking me along with other animals
in the forest called human nature.



(Karataka & Damanaka from Panchatantra; "The Fox and the Hedgehog", Isaiah Berlin)