Great Floods

Great floods have occurred in the past

No one talks of who triggered it

But we know right from Noah

Who were the saviours

Gods can’t seem to do much

In the drowning world

Where drowned ones

Wait for that one physical and real

Hand to manifest

The hand of the saviours

To pull them out of the debris

To live to tell the tale

Some say it felt like

A great wall of water and sludge

Came towards them

Scenes of apocalypse unfolded

Is the world coming to 

An end? 

We know there are

Profiteers getting richer

By burning the planet

But ice is ice is ice

With a fixed melting point

A completely non-negotiable one

We have watched for a decade or more

Bargains over 1 degrees or two

But idiots never understood

Glaciers will melt

No gods can save us

From nature’s fury

We transcended the boundaries

Taking earth for granted

Like we take our women too

But everything has a breaking point

Yet we refuse to learn

As long as the poor

Or rich tourists die

Does really matter anymore?

Nor do lives on a narrow strip

Which is getting narrower

Nor do high altitude folks

Who are the first victims

And first responders too

Who is to be held accountable?

For uncountable deaths

We will bear witness

Make films, poetry, stories too

We have all documentation tools

To document the horror

Soon we will walk around

With oxygen masks

As cities turn unliveable

While mountains prone to GLOFs

You escape the noise

To seek peace in higher altitude

Only to get buried under a glacier deluge

No one knows where you disappeared

Lucky ones say Shiva or Jesus or Prophet

Or any god of their calling saved them

No one asks why gods are so selective?

They never punish the perpetrators

They go after the poorest of poor

Trapped in bare minimum cycles of survival

On a larger scale we are in an era

Which might get defined in retrospect

An era hooked to screens

Watching their own collapse

And mountains turning into rivers

Minute by minute

Waiting for saviours

To manifest to save them

From themselves

As we sink into the deluge and debris

Of our own making

When will we learn to act?

Isn’t it too late already?

Post Rain Night Walk

After long last

The rains have come home

Sound of rains

Like music to the ears

The city roads and trees look happy

Finally a complete wash

And a chance to come clean

Washing away all the dust and grime

The cars roofs and leaves

Glistening with water droplets

Finally clouds kept their promise

They brought down water drops

To trap light and refract away

To create sparkling dots

Mini stars on the ground

Amidst all the darkness

Climate Chaos

Some blame it on nature
The sun’s activity cycles
Some blame it on human activities
Unprecedented cutting of trees
And encroachment of lakes and forests
So I guess Earth is playing it fair
It blows too hot, dry or humid
And just when humans start complaining
It blows hailstorms, cyclones and rains
With water water everywhere
And nowhere for it to go!!


My house help lamented the other day
That I was spending a lot on house plants
She hinted jokingly that money could help poor
Ah!! The fallacy of existence
I could only smile back and say
They were my buddies who gave me free oxygen and beautiful flowers for free
We take the oxygen we breathe much for granted
Just like the clean water we drink
And the gravity and the magnetic field
And also the sun and the moon
And of course our sole planet earth
While we spend billions to find exoplanets
With a hint of the existence of life


Perhaps, we deserve this wrath of nature
To reset our perspectives and context
Nothing is unlimited and forever
And everything follows
The law of reciprocity
Hate begets hate and Love begets love
Eye for an eye has blinded the humanity
Yet we refuse to learn
We make it all about profits and money
Climate chaos will be good for climate insurance


Rich will get richer and poor will become poorer
Except for the few who will be paraded as hope
The model examples of rags to riches tale
The dream after all needs to be sold
To keep nightmare going!!!

An Ode to A Photographer

Photography is a rare art

Playing with omnipresent

Light and Time 

Capturing moments

That transpire magically

Just like a sudden flight of a bird

Or deep pensive prayer of a saint

Or something unsettling

Or maybe deeply political

Just like a dying child staring

At an approaching vulture

These are moments of truth

That transcends Time

A photograph rarely lies

Unless of course it is doctored

To peddle a lie

Ever since it’s invention

There have been warriors

Going to the ends and the depth

To capture beauty and horror

Their gaze becomes

The gaze of the masses

That’s the magic

They turn you

Into them

The gaze changes places

You become the onlooker

Your silence becomes complicity

Life of a photographer

Isn’t an easy one

Trudging with the gears

They make the unseen

And unknown visible

They unravel the truth

That hides in the plain sight

Leaving us to wonder

How did we allow this to happen?

Are we going to do something?

Photographs have changed

The world history

But photographers carry

The burden of Sisyphus

They must push the boulders

And the borders again and again

They must teach

The blind populace to see 

And behold the truth

And not turn a blind eye 

Again and again

Photographers have turned 

Cosmetic over ages

They just indulge in beauty

Safety and narcissism of it

Yet there came along

A rare tall one

With a discerning eye

And deep wisdom

Who could stop the world

With one single photograph

Using simple Light and Time

To paint the undeniable Truth

An ace visual storyteller

Holding the mirror to the world

Leaving for the future

Stories that are imprinted

By light on the frames of Time

And memory forever!!

PS: In remembrance of legendary Raghu Rai who passed on to another realm today

A Hot Summer Afternoon In Uru

Uru in kannada means ‘town/village/native place’. It turns out that I have experienced extreme summers in multiple major cities/towns of India.So I really don’t know which place I belong to whenever I think of hot summers.

My ancestors lived in the arid plateau of North Karnataka, I was born and brought up in Bombay. But every summer holidays we went to my grandparents place till we stopped going and they moved on. So hot summer afternoons were spent listening to my grandma’s tales from scriptures, playing with siblings and cousins till native homes were around. So did that place stop being my Uru? I really don’t know. 

Then there were summers spent in Bombay in various suburbs. Mangoes and playtime dominate the memories. Also reading the few books we had again and again. Postponing all studies and homework till the holidays ended. The school reopening often coincided with the onset of monsoons.

Then I have been in other Urus looking for shade in the hot summer afternoon, thirsty sojourns and all yummy Rasnas and Ruh Afzaas to quench the thirst. The west of India has its own charm. Officially summer ended with watching monsoon on marine drive (not very far from the hospital where I was born).

I often wonder did the sea breeze kiss me in that cradle room before others did? I feel more like a wild nomadic kind who loves nature, seas, hills and starry nights. And most of all the evening breezes which come from nowhere to caress you at the end of a tiring day.

Like Kamala Das, I am digressing, I am from many places and have found unexpected twists and turns in life all the while searching for myself and trying to make peace with the void within. Love came and passed, like it always does – just like summer.

I am envious when flowers bloom, trees bear mangoes and other fruits while we face sweltering heat. I always thought, I am not a summer person.

And then one summer I found myself dirt poor in Paris with my young son. We rationed to afford a gelato but we splurged on a TGV ride. We thought it was going to be the only summer of our lifetimes spent in Lyon and Paris. But then that wasn’t to be…

Little did I imagine my boy would move there and I would move cities – another Uru and will be living by myself waiting for summer break to catch my breath. Listening to my son complain about unbearable heat in Paris and him wanting to be in my Uru to escape the heat.

Dystopian times indeed…summers are strange in any uru – any town – native or non native towns, be it here or in Europe. But then one can find kindness lurking in shadows in the hot cruel summer heat. I shifted to Uru two summers ago and found immense kindness in the city that had completely changed.

And then one fine day, in a cab ride, I found my playlist which resonated completely with my state of mind. Little did I imagine that I would be writing this prose poem while waiting for the live concert of same soulful songs to begin. Summer does spring surprises while springs often go summer!!

Immortality

There are ways to live forever

Through your sheer talent

There are ways to be

Remembered fondly

By gently nudging the broken souls

Be it Van Gogh or Sylvia Plath

Or countless many more

Who struggled for existence

Struggled to pursue their passion

They died as mere beings

Unrecognised mortals

But lived forever

As Immortals…

Time truly

Is a game changer

The more you 

Try to hold on to it

The more quickly it slips away

And then without

Your knowledge or approval

It makes you live forever

As immortals…

Condemned to be

As per everyone’s

Imagination and perception!!

Travels

Intriguing migratory birds

With tiny magnetic compasses

In their tiny little being

Navigating with perfection

They travel miles and miles

Across from Siberia and elsewhere

To find their little green oasis

Their islets, wetlands

To  stay and nest

Till the fledglings are strong enough

They are so faithful to

Their geography and biology

Tuned perfectly

To the Nature of their very being

I wonder how they perceive

The climate change

And the erratic weather

Also the flying drones

And fighter planes

All set forth by humans

To take over land and resources

That doesn’t even belong to them

Migratory birds

Are quite enviable

They don’t need papers

To prove they nationalites

They fly high above

Man made borders

Who knows maybe

They will be

Saviours of life on earth

When humans go extinct

A Poem a Day

It is a good way of beginning

The ‘Cruelest Month’ of the year

A poem a day!

How else would one survive?

The daily calamities, killings

And mournings

The sense of worse times ahead

For Entropy always wins

The beautiful flower of yesterday

Is wilted, fallen and forgotten

Just realised I did see the Halley’s Comet

And then came the afterthought

I won’t ever be seeing it again!

It will come irrespective of everything

As sun beckons it every 75 years

Plants thrive on sunlight

Maybe they bloom flowers

For the Sun!!

A return gift maybe

For all the free glorious light

Plants know gratitude

While we seem to thrive

On regret, hate and revenge!

#GloPoWriMo

Stars burn out too

Sun and stars may seem like

Permanent fixtures of our lives

Moving across the sky

The sun and other billions of them

They are literally a ball of fire

Constantly fusing atoms together

Depleting their reserves slowly

And very brightly

They are going to die too

Each one of them

Die and evolve into something else

Depending on how big or small they are

White dwarf, black dwarf, neutron stars

Or maybe a black hole

Just like every other being

The stars burn out too

And fade into oblivion

Their life timescales are too large

For us to witness

Like ours is for creatures who

Live for only for a bit

Nothing is permanent

Nor stars, nor universe nor we

Yet we keep seeking forevers

Knowing very well that

The cosmic dance can end  any moment

Knowing that everyone will move on

Memories linger but that too

For a while, only a little while

In the grand scale of the universe

Sky, horizons, time, colours

Eternities and forevers are illusions

Stars burn out too…so do we…

Sometimes It Is Too Late…

A petit pink fresh flower

Fell on the roadside

Just detached from the mother tree

I thought of picking it up

On my way back

As I walked ahead

A big SUV passed me by

At the end of the lane

As I turned

I saw it backing

Into its marked zone

To park perhaps

To my utter dismay

The wheels went over

That petit pink flower lay crushed

Beneath the mother tree

Sometimes it is just too late

To  behold, cherish and save

Beauty is often fragile and transient

Always ending up crushed

Under the ruthless

Wheels of the civilization

Sometimes it is too late

Most times it is too late!!