Category: poetry

Revisiting the Past

What looks like a wasteland
Exactly that’s where
My home stood
With a beautiful garden

I stare at that land
That unsold dirty plot
Not belonging to anyone
Yet belonging to all

It was once upon a time
guarded by a tall wall
The wall is also half gone
While rest is totally erased

The land is covered with grass
The same grass we despised
But yet picked the holier ones
For the offerings

Along with the garden and home
My people and trees are gone too
I can almost hear the voices
Which lived there

How was it all demolished?
Brick by brick?
Blow by blow?
Or was it natural decadence?

I guess, I came looking for her
That barefooted wild girl
Who ran to school and cycled,
Played and giggled in the garden

As I turn around,
I find her on the wall graffiti
A barefooted wild girl
With her back turned upon the world

Strangely the roads
Where I learnt
To walk, run and cycle
Have remained the same

Just like the stubborn grass
Memories are stubborn too
So are some friendships
And roads we return to

Happiness on Discount

Have we become junkies
Addicted to hope and joys
Rainbows and silver linings
All things positive decoys?

We proclaim that
It is just
A matter of choice –
To be or not to be

How does it matter
If conflicts rage
Or forests go ablaze?

How does it matter
If someone is killed
Or incarcerated
For our rights?

They know
We enjoy cheap thrills
And discounted happiness
With easy EMIs on sale

How does it matter
If we are told to teach
Wrong facts or hate
Or fiction?

As long as happiness is
Prime and insta-delivered
Does it matter
If the planet is under threat?

They know we are junkies
Addicted to hope and joys
Rainbows and silver linings
All things positive decoys

Gambling away a future
We won’t be a part of?
Doesn’t it seem easy, quick
And affordable?

Labyrinth

Trapped in the Labyrinth

It is often impossible
To get out the labyrinth
For the simple reason
You don’t feel trapped

It doesn’t seem what it is
You keep going onwards
While the labyrinth’s design
Takes you backward

Blame it on the design
Or the divine
There is no way to know
That it is a trap

You go in circles
Thinking it’s taking you forward
But it’s a spiral descent
To nowhere or maybe hell

You are happy
With the clever deception
Who doesn’t like
Illusion of happiness?

Who needs justice and peace
Happiness and prosperity?
The grand illusion of it all
Is fine enough

Why risk it all?
For which end?
It’s an endless
Labyrinth

Fatigued, fogged
You are simply happy
Forward or backward or circles
How does it matter?

Soon lifetime will be served
Labyrinth will be inherited
Baton will be passed on
The game will go on…

Designers will blame the divine
Divine will be part of the design
Truth will become a beautiful lie
And all lies will seem truthful

It’s an endless labyrinth
We need to navigate
To keep going
To reach nowhere or maybe hell

Random Musings

Yet another new year
Is back with the old baggage
Of fears and cautions
Prejudices and bigotry
Lurking shadows of
Diseases and death

They tell us
To hang on
To seek hope in
Science and prayers
Look for silver linings
And healings
Lost love
And musings

While prejudice kills peace,
And pride our compassion
While hate spreads
Like wildfire
Our comforts get
Traded and sold

While we lose our voice
And rights
Like Jesus
Or phoenix
Maybe they will rise
Just like balloons
Filled with their breath

Those little street urchins
They bear testimony of
Our collective failures,
Our naked emperors
Maybe their balloons display
Everyone’s lost smiles!!

#2022

Best not Taken

Thud – will that how it will sound?
Breaking lazy monotony
Of a rainy evening
Ensuing a chaos

Miraculously
Things will be taken care of
Strangers will curse,
blame and pity
And so will
family, friends and colleagues

People who never paused
To listen or understand
Will dissect your being
For hours

Gaslighting the departed
Absolving themselves of guilt
Everyone will move on

Within a day or two or years
Presence of a life will be erased
Unloved life would be lost in vain

Is that all there is?

Pause and look up
Behold the bird
Soaring in the sky
Flying into the setting sun

Birth is never a choice
But when death seems at times
The trick definitely is to
Keep breathing

Wait for the moment to pass
Look beyond
Outside your window
There is a life that awaits
That wants you to live

Take the pain in stride
And marinate your life with it
The last desperate step
Will definitely be
The best not taken!!

Disbelief

We stare in disbelief
At life that slips away
Who knew just a breath
All that it takes to be alive

We stare in disbelief
At all the lives
Washed ashore 
Becoming nation's memories

We close our eyes in disbelief
When we cannot take it anymore
Confined in our safe homes
We turn into living ghosts 

We stare in disbelief 
As humanity fades away
We who love wars and winners
Are the tired vanquished lot 

We stare in disbelief
As leaders trade away our lives
And our deaths 
To build their empire of glory






Just Like a Driftwood

Don't behold me 
With contempt
Because I floated in
Just like a driftwood

I had a name
Born to someone
Isn't it enough
To qualify as a human?

Do not fear me
Do not hate my folks
Simply they couldn't afford
 - love, pyre or a grave 

They probably thought
Water should be my grave
Instead of fire or earth

River being the river
Did what it does best
Buoyed me back
Just like a driftwood  

I had love to give 
But there were no takers
In the land of hate 

River could have set me free
But it returned me to you
As a nameless corpse
To be counted among
The countless 

River will remember me
Even if you don't
This beloved river is
Our memorial!

#CovidDeaths