Evenings

I can't say I remember you all the time
but, some days when as a dried leaf
I traverse those roads
I think of you.
And as the breeze unfurls the evening
I remember your hair
flying into my face.

Visions

What use are the visions of a dying man
even if they are about a happy place?
In the silence between sobs
he mumbles with excitement
and the sobs rise in pitch
drowning his faint voice.

Buzz

The buzz around bread and butter keeps me away
from the poetry in life.
Lately I realize that poetry is
for sleepy afternoons and dimly lit evenings.
The blazing mornings need something else.
Something un-poetic.

Hang on

Too many people tried to push you out
of that crowded city bus onto the road
Do you remember what you did then?
Just hanged in there on a loose foothold.

There were times when you were snubbed
right when the confidence started dwindling.
You wanted then, to withdraw yourself
from that moment and from the world
into a shell of disconnect.
But that was not what you did.
You stayed. You played.

You were never tired of hanging on.
Never lost out on dignity.
Never backed out on the
little things that you promised.
A smile here and a smile there.

Smile:that was your strength in hard times.
An inward smile and an outward smile.
A smile to yourself and to the world.
A smile to reflect and reflect off.

Table Talk

At the canteen table we sit
like the arrows in a quiver.
Leaning in different directions
against the circle of truth.

Various things we talk
and fragment each others opinions.
We talk big things
Good, Bad and God.

Each day we start off on a similar premise
but reach a different shade of conclusion
As if we are going about a
single brush stroke each time.

At this rate when will the painting be complete
on the canvas of time, always wetted
by the sea of past.

The present is a shoe lost to the sea
dangling for sometime on the waves of recent past
but quickly receding into the vastness.

What are we doing then at the table?

Just throwing stones as we walk past the sea
to create ripples that would reach
the things beyond our speech.

Guided Tour

The Nawab escaped through this hole.
And the Begum through that one.
They went to Delhi nonstop.

Isn't this litter here?
No no. Not at all.
This was a big chemical cover up
for a treasure map.

Did some one find it?
Some tried but they died.

What about the Government?
Did it do something?

OK.The tour is over.

Convoluted Memories

How do you measure
the range of sadness
or the extent of happiness
other than tagging them
with available imagery and
shelving them as memories.

Memories lose color and fall off
as flakes of white wash on the wall.
The imagery stays with you as
a dejavu, but the context is lost
as we rumble along with our linear lives.

What about people in the war zone
devoid of an escape route?
What is the imagery they would tag
their few happy memories with?
Will they sift the surroundings and
rag-pick an unblemished image?

With almost a constant
reconstruction and redestruction
their lives are in a half finished state
like the heritage monuments
withered by the sun and the wind.

Their memories might be convoluted
where the distance between happiness and sadness
is not years of normalcy but
a calculated reach time of the bomb shell.