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?

Going Solo

It didn’t take long

To go solo

Be it movies

Or restaurants

Or museums

Or a bookstore

Or treks

I don’t even remember

When it began

Perhaps during my college

My long solo commute?

Every daily commuter

Is always alone

Though almost crushed

In a crowded train or bus

There is a constant

Inner talk with self

About a thing

Or millions of things

Or just an empty mind

Too fatigued to think

You don’t need people

When you grow up

So rugged

And then of course

There are betrayals

Of trust and time

Then there was beautiful phase

When my newborn boy

Became my extension

I was never alone

I was his constant

For that tiny life

I had brought forth

Into this chaotic world

I was never alone

Kids never let you be

Unless you play along

So often it would

Be the library or bookstore  visits

Where I would sit solo

In line of sight of my boy

Far far away in the kids section

I don’t remember

Who exactly was I

Training to be alone ?

After the boy grew up

And flew off far far away

I made up my mind

To be the solitary reaper

Of my abandoned pursuits

I unearthed my buried self

In place of a girl in 20’s

Out came a woman in her 50’s

More calmer, confident and wiser

Much slower too

How I wish I could reach out

To that girl and tell her to go solo

The world abandons you anyways

Women are supposed to play

A second fiddle in everything

Wish I could spare her from

All the traumas and dilemmas

And of course all the tears

My dark circles are rightfully earned

But here I am in my 50’s

Carrying that abandoned

Spirit of my 20’s

I know it feels absurd

To those who never tried

(Or didn’t have to)

To stand up for oneself

And live for a while

Remember?

We have abandoned our earth too

Who moves solo in the dark space

And then there is the final solo act

When we depart solo!!

The Night Sky

Once upon a time

I would lie under the starry night

In utter darkness

To do a Messier marathon

I knew those magnificent

Beauties of the night sky

By their first name

Out of nowhere

They would appear

Once sun disappeared

We would behold them

In the field of view

Of our small and big

Telescopes facing the night sky

Just like the sun

Constellations would dip too

Below the horizon

While new ones appeared

Nothing compares to the

Silence and darkness

Of the dark night sky

Which has inspired

Countless artists and poets

I trust the night

It removes the blinding lights

Both sun and moon are absent

We can peer much deeper

And beyond

Going back in time

14 billion years is the age of the Universe

Along the way multitude of stars

In the billions of galaxies

Are burning away

Fusing atoms together

Forming newer elements

Elements that make you and me

And every being on this planet

We are after all atoms

Trying to figure out atoms

A scientist famously said

Annihilation preludes creation

And vice versa

Creation of new particles

And elements go on

Till the stable ones are born

Nature loves stability

But then entropy is a reality too

In the great cosmic churning

Life indeed is a miracle

But then…

One day after millions of years

The sun will die…

It will engulf the earth

Growing into a red giant

Till then we will play perhaps

This game of war and fear

While sending missions into the space 

Such contradicting realities of our existence

We needn’t end it all here and now

We are self similar beings

Made of same cosmic dust

It would be such a pity

To cut this fabulous story short!!  

PS: Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s book – Poems to Night

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

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…

Difficult Days

These are difficult days

When reality occults the dreams

It is bizarre isn’t it?

Reality that we try to figure out

Or try to make sense of ?

Is this also imagined ?

Then what is real?

What I think is real real?

The time that ticks away?

Or the dream that fades over time?

Is time too imagined?

Just like dreams ?

Sun does rise for real

But again it’s a play

Play of light, atmosphere

We see it before it even 

Peeps over the horizon 

While setting sun lingers elsewhere

It rises for us in full glory

It illuminates the tiniest dust particles

While darkness engulfs elsewhere

With no power to light their lives

Powerless have to make through

Another cold imprisoned night

Maybe darkness is a blessing

That hides the cruelty, rubble

That amputated humanity

Missing its phantom spine

Where do we go from here? 

Dreams are the only ransom

We can pay

To continue existing

Dreams of freedom

And that hopeless hope

Stars twinkling away far off

They are the witnesses

Of how our sun was born

And our Earth came into being

How dinosaurs roared and vanished

Maybe if we can fine tune

From somewhere

Maybe it is still visible

How it all began

The eternal cycle of

creation and destruction

It is such a pity

We want to behold pleasure

Which comes at the cost of pain!

We want to behold AI

Which comes at the I

These are difficult days…