Category: city

Dreams

I take long walks
In Latin quarters in Paris

I enter a random church
Someone is playing Ave Maria

I climb Sahyadri hills
Feeling free and fatigued

I walk along Marine drive
Watching rains approach

I am stranded in deluge
Waiting for a transport home

At times I am sailing
Along Tungabhadra in Hampi

Or I am listening to a stream
On some river bank in Bhutan

Or I walk and sob on a beach
Unsure of taste of salt

It could be sea
Or my tears 

At times I am trapped
In Escherisque space

Or walking on a 
Mobius strip 

I am lost and then
I am found

I reach yet
I don't reach

While Uncertainty is
The only certainty 

Waking hours 
A prolonged nightmare

My escape and freedom
Is in my dream 

Selfish it may seem
I don't want to be awake 

I don't want to talk
Of nightmares today

#covidtimes

Howling Winds

It was in the news

Cyclonic storm was on its way

They did what they could

To prevent the disaster

They monitored the eye and the tail

There it was circulating,

feeding on winds

And gathering momentum

It all seemed calm on the shores

Till the waves began to move faster

It came closer,

Sounds of the howling winds

Made it all real

Everyone knew

All preparations were made

All estimates looked good

But there was no way to assess

The damage it did

Young ones quivered in fear

Homeless knew they will be

Unaccounted ones

Lonely man walked on the street

Unaware of the perils

No one had told him to be safe

He took shelter under the very tree

That crushed him minutes later

Howling winds

Harbingers of death

Preyed on lonely, helpless

And homeless

Farmers lamented as

Entire harvest got washed away

No one realised

Storm was our harvest

By feeding Earth, wind and seas

Our anger, disgust, greed,

wastes, pollutants and hatred

Cyclonic storm just churned it all.around

And returned what we had reaped

With anger and vengeance

Winds, earth and sea turned hostile

Howling winds perhaps were warning us –

“Don’t be a bully

It all can all boomerang very badly!! “

Silence and the Darkness

When silence becomes deafening

And the words hide in the dark

Slowing erasing history

I try to figure out their forms

Or meaning or language

Nothing emerges

It’s a dark dense space

Nothing is visible

Nor is audible

I wait

Maybe words are being born

Maybe a new reality is taking a form

What if it’s a monster that’s in the making?

What if the silence is made of inaudible screams?

As the world looks away in faith

Blinded by the festive lights

I will hang on to my doubts

I shall still try to listen to sounds of silence

And try to peer into dark abyss

With or without hope

Bare Foot Joy

Making, flying and chasing paper kites

Bare foot

Running across the crowded streets

They seem to soar just like the kites

Kite runners look happy

Across continents their joy is same

For the moment

They are free just like their kites

Riding on the lightness of the moment

They behold pure joy

The joy that eludes

The boy across the street

Sitting in the car

Staring through the glass window

He is a prisoner of luxuries

While poverty has set others free

They run like wind

Through narrow lanes

They hop across building roof tops

While the other stays glued

To the smart phone screen

Sun kissed

Blessed by the evening breeze

Our kite runners seize the moment!

Ah! the bare foot joy

That eludes the little boy!

Juxtaposed

Man against man

Man against women

Women against women

Man against Nature

You against me

All of us are juxtaposed!

One defines other

One ends other

One begins other

On a dark night

We seek light

On a sunny day

We look for shade

Light and dark

Day and night

Love and war

Life and death

Juxtaposed!

Sad seeks joy

Happiness

Sadness

Juxtaposed!

Broken against

The Whole

Nothing can stand

On its own

It needs the other!!

You eliminate one

Other loses meaning

Yet the fight remains

Eternal!

Juxtaposed

One belittling the other

Forever!!

Other

Peasants will rise
They will sing
They will protest
They will take bullet
They will save democracy
While we will fret
And intellectualize!

Educated middle classes
Don’t you worry
These whom you ‘other’
Will save your jobs too
They don’t need you
But you do
To reap crops,
Cook your food
Cobble your shoes
Tailor your clothes,
Build your homes
Clean your homes
Toilets and cars too!!

After the revolution
They will still come
And assume their lowly jobs
While you will rot in your guilt
Or die with a foolish smug!
History textbooks will talk of them
But you will be mentioned
As the ‘other’ who let the system down!!

#saynotohate

Staying Relevant

Staying relevant

In irrelevant times

Is the challenge

Engage

Or disengage?

Stay attached?

Or be detached?

When Time sweeps

You away from the frame

Should one linger

On the fringes?

Where does one go?

Is there a Rumi’s field?

The even playing field?

Where they play it fair

No time to call a foul

A foul

No ground rules

It’s a game

Where no one wins

But all try to

Reinvent

Shifting positions

Moving goal-posts

To stay relevant

In these irrelevant times…

To Gabo, With Love

When life turns mundane

And days repeat themselves

When people and their acts

Seem self-similar

I think of you, Gabo

I wait patiently

For magic to spring from reality

It does spring from Life

From the mundane

On dullest day

I step out to behold

The beautiful spring

A saddest day

Holds a surprise

Dreams I dare not

Yet they come true

The places I got kicked

Same places do spring tickles

Instead of me seeking beauty

Beauty seeks me

When the world tells me I am wrong

I wait in the dark hour

For the light and truth to appear

To liberate me

Gabo, thanks for teaching me

Teaching me to wait

To look for beauty in the decadence

To see life and hope spring

From unusual dark spaces

Thanks for bringing to us

The tale of Ship-Wrecked Sailor

And the woman who trained her dog

Trained it to visit her grave

For Hundred Years of Solitude

And Love at the Time of Cholera

For teaching me Love and Death

Mean the same

Thanks, dear Gabo