Category: poetry

Blue and Red

They both argued

About glory

Red being red

Flaunted being important

Underlined with Red

Called Blue

The scatter brain

Blue being blue

Mellow in being

Simply said

I make most of my

Wavelength

And let small particles

Scatter me to the Oblivion

Thus played out

The most spectacular sunset

Blue sky smeared

with Vermillion red

Sun smiled as it set

Ah! the usual fight

Forgetting they

Both came from white light!

Strangeness

In a strange city

Trees grow

In abandoned homes

And uprooted people

Dwell beside the roads

There is no place

To plant trees

There is no home

For migrants

Trees grow

Inside old homes

And people grow old

Without homes

Both trees and people

Have become refugees

And homes are empty

Devoid of love

And compassion

Trees and people

Search for roots

In a strange city

On a strange planet

Here She Lies…

Under the Canopy

Here She lies

In Paris

In exile

At Pere Lachaise

A mother, a queen

With a vanquished dream

She crossed seven seas

A sin in the 1850s

In the hope of justice and freedom

From the Queen of England

Mocked, ignored and bribed

She told them

They could not own

The kingdom of her son

And her pride

Here she lies

Our own Queen of Oudh

Next to a bush of roses

Growing in the wild

In exile

at Pere Lachaise

Resting quietly among the greats

She sought nothing

But Peace and Freedom

 

Among all the shiny graves

If you see an earthly grave

Fractured by Time

Under a green canopy

Know that it’s her

India’s brave Queen Mother –

Janab-e-Aliah Mallika Kishwar

Who crossed seven seas

A sin in the 1850s

To seek Peace and Freedom

And fair political justice

From the Imperial queen

And did no compromise

 

Do pause

And pray

If you may

But do tell her tale

Here She lies…

 

Kafkaesque

I exist therefore I am

I am therefore I exist

I am the means

and the end

I think

so I do

I do

so I think

I stand

so I believe

I believe

so I stand

I reason

to be

not to be

I protest

for Justice

That is blind

I am free

but chained

by law

But the law exists

to free the chains

what is Right

is also Left of Right

But Right is not wrong

so Left is Right

By the Brook

There she lay

In a lonely grave

By the Brook
Unseen and unknown

Till a lonely shepherd

Stumbled upon her

And found her tale

A glorious tale of

Love and loss

Of a royal Princess

The most beautiful

Tormented soul

Soon the stories

Were made

And unmade

Shepherd loved

The dead dame

And his fame

He tended to

The tomb

Soon lovers came

To be blessed

By the cursed Princess

Little did anyone know

Six feet under

Was a sad refugee

Who had lived,

In pain,

Loved,
And died in vain

Little did she know

Her death will give

Her a life, care

And a fame

And not far away

In the grand Cemetery

In an unmarked grave

Was the real Princess

Finally dethroned by Time

The Day Freedom Was Won and Lost

They both stood vigil

Just like lovers

With surgical precision

Lines were drawn

And lives got thrown

Into disarray

One thought Nation did not belong to them

Other was too young and weak to claim or protect

The two great lovers

Stood and watched

As a Nation got ripped into two

And precious lives ebbed away

No one realised

It was the very idea of love and freedom

They had aborted that day

As the Nation bled

Along with lives

Homes

Identities

Peace

Love

Humanity

All was lost

And alleged lovers stood vigil

Arrogantly announcing

Their Nation’s tryst with destiny!!

Emerging from the Dark

Engulfed by the light

Blinded

By own luminous being

Unable to see or feel

How others feel…

An era of knowledge

Bereft of Wisdom

Desensitized

Sensitivity reigns

A world

where refugee children

Face trials

Four year olds

Die smothered with lust

Hope is a lost cause

Let darkness descend

Light has led us nowhere

Maybe answers we seek

Lie in darkness

Let there be dark

And quiet healing

While emerging from the dark

Maybe we will learn to behold Beauty

And the Truth yet again!

Brokenness

Brokenness

Sometimes I wonder,
Is it the brokenness
which holds the world together?
a crack that still holds parts?

Is it the brokenness that
unveils the Whole?
The imagined whole –
That never will be or
Maybe never was…

Even if the cracks give away –
Can broken pieces be
whole parts in themselves?
Or maybe broken parts
Will create a kaleidoscope

Sometimes I wonder
Is it the brokenness
that holds the world together?

What purpose does the Whole serve?
The Whole which excludes,
smugly nestled in itself
Till a crack breaks the egoistic shell
The Whole will never be a whole

Sometimes I wonder,
Is it the brokenness that
holds the world together?

Borders divide land and humans
But yet, when challenged
The humanity that rises,
Is often more than the sum
Of the broken souls

Sometimes I wonder,
Is it the brokenness that
that holds the world together?