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!!

Light and Dark

Light and Dark

Light and darkness
Both fill my home
I have made peace
With both
For, I dwell in the greys

I never had a life plan
But life did have a design
Without a choice
I went along

I chose life or
Life chose me
Here we are
Conversing daily

I don’t know
What happens tomorrow
Or day after
Or years later

I am fatigued
I am just arriving
At my present
Made of nows

Don’t ask me
About my future
Or the path that
Hasn’t yet appeared

Perhaps, I will forever
Dwell in the greys and greens
To soak in the blue hour
Seeking stars, comets and the moon

Trust and Love

Trust and Love

The kitten ran
Helter skelter
Scared, very scared
Neighborhood kids
Tried to reason with it
But it was too small
Full of fear
Confused maybe
Maybe it felt attacked
While actually it was
Being rescued

Rescuers didn’t earn
Its trust perhaps
But they were sure
It ought to trust them
The more they tried
Befriending it
More it shrank
Into the shadows

Lessons in trust
Are most difficult
To learn
It’s a language
It’s an action
That promises safety
Both sides need to be
Calm and patient
To set this dialogue stage
On safe middle grounds

What is the language of trust?
What is the language of love?
No one teaches these
We are supposed to learn them
Context, syntax and meaning
Most often we learn the hard way
After the trust is broken
And love breaks the trust

In that darkness
Tiny kitten couldn’t see
Trust or love in the eyes
While everyone saw
Fear in its eyes
When they backed off
It ran for its life
Away from the life
It took a while
For it to return
To this game of
Hide and seek again

Maybe it will survive
Maybe it won’t
Depends on what lurks
In the darkness
One can only hope
It finds its way to
To the bowl of milk
Waiting for it
Food often builds trust
So does tender care

Tenderness is rare
No one teaches us that too
Knowingly, unknowingly
It comes our way
Like the gentle breeze
That helps us breathe

Love can be suffocating
It can smother and kill
What it pretends to protect
While trying to control
We never try to understand
Children’s language
Instead we expect them
To comprehend ours

Children too run
Helter skelter
With fear in the eyes
Unsure why
Mistrust masquerades
As trust
And anger as love
Like Pavlov’s subjects
Why does it all
Have to be reward
Or punishment?

When will we learn
To back off?
And wait patiently
With food and trust
On the table
And tender love in
Our hearts?

#WorldMentalHealthDay2025

My Happy Place

We all look for it

A proverbial ‘happy place’

A place where

One can be oneself

One can find yourself

One learns to look

At self and world differently

In the life’s roller coaster ride

There is always one place, one city

Where you know

You are safe

Not just because of people

But in spite of people

You step out

And the breeze simply seems

To blow to carry away your worries

Making breathing easy 

The green canopies and flowering trees

Waft of filter coffees and dosas, 

The flower fragrances 

Aromatically you are home too

You may not have roots here

But it lets you grow and rediscover 

Your own forgotten self and dreams

Though the traffic is traumatic

It soothes your trauma

Bangalore, what else do I say?

I literally got my second life here

After that near fatal accident

The neurologist too humoured me

With a local humour which is mild and raw

But punches do land

No wonder stand ups thrive here

The city where startups are often born to die

In a shortest span of time

People know how to pick themselves

Where uber drivers too have tales

Of bad investments and losses

You taught me to pick myself up too

Many years ago and later now

I find my broken self here in the bookshops

In science spaces and conversations

Where people still assert

While respecting boundaries

They listen, they let you have the mic

This city feels like my happy place

I can be anyone here

Educator, poet, archivist, traveller

Storyteller, photographer, reader, writer

And be them all at once too

Mankind consists of all kinds

But I always find more of my kind

In this good old charming city

(Which is fast losing its charms)

To which I keep returning to

With my scars and bruises

To my utter surprise

People call me a healer 

That’s how we just heal each other

With conversations over cuppas

Of filter coffees or walks

Undramatically, unknowingly

A calm city which is no hurry

To be smart, fast or the best

Maybe hostile and unwelcoming to some

But then we all need to

Find our happy and safe space

Which lets us be…our unapologetic self

MK

Killings

Senseless violent killings

Never make sense

More so

Killing of young children

They don’t deserve

To be targets

In a failed world

With failed morals

They don’t

Need to die

During morning prayers

For our failings

To build a safe world

Senseless violent killings

Of young children anywhere

Doesn’t make sense

Far too many children

In far too many countries

Are laying their lives

For humanity’s moral decadence

Be it in Gaza, Ukraine or US itself

The more weapons you build

The more innocents will die

Why do you wish to rule

Over corpses and graves?

What will grow there?

Your riches are scarred

And tainted with bloodbaths

We have scarred children

Who grow up as adults

To kill more children

Vicious cycles of deaths

They are on you

Though you have

Traded your conscience

To guns and drones lobby

And your religion too

How many more small graves

Need to be dug?

Don’t you realise

You are ending your line

The line of inheritance

Riches and homes

Build over little graves

Will never last

Should not last

Whose War?

War has become an orphan

No one owns it anymore

There are no clear sides

Everyone just collectively

Decides to be silent

Children are killed

Buildings are razed

Drones are dropped

Media says and shows it all

Except who are the perpetrators

And who are the victims

There were grand wars

Once upon a time

Fought for justice, power

And similar thuggery

There were heroic warriors

Grand Manhattan project

Even Nuclear bomb

Had a purpose

Now there are drones

Flying with precision

Targetting journalists

Activists, hospitals

Everyone is vulnerable

No one wants to own a war

No one marches with conviction

Cowardice is abundant

They kill the unarmed

They target civilians

Throwing away all rule books

Treaties and peace talks of earlier wars

Ammunition and weapons?

Suppliers perhaps are the same

To both the sides

Absolutely fair in their

Dealings and trade

Who killed whom for what?

Please don’t ask

It’s a catch 22 trap

War is good for the economy

After all 

It is all collateral damage

For greater good

Whose greater good and for what?

Ah! Don’t ask

Along with war

Goodness, kindness

Have become orphaned too

After poisoning the soil and soul

We sow and reap only hate

Love too has become an orphan

With no grave or tombstone

War has become an orphan

Idiot

Idiot!

They laughed

When she looked at the horizon

No one knew

She could see that

Sky never kissed the earth

They laughed

When she looked up at the sky

Idiot!

No one knew she looked into the infinite space

Seeking…

They mocked

When she kissed a youth

What would an idiot know about love?

No one knew

That she had kissed Life

And paid her compliments

For being alive,

For being able to laugh and cry

For being able to love

Written in 2000 after watching Gelsomina in Fellini’s La Strada

Forever

Forever is a strange faraway land

Where eternity dwells

The word itself

Hides a promise, an irony

As well as a dread

People want to 

Live forever

Stay together

Forever

And those who die

Are gone forever

Forevers are the promises

That we never keep

Forever is a sand

That slips through our hands

Yet we cling to it

Just like we cling

To life itself

We wish for forever

Peace, happiness, health and wealth

None of which ever lasts ever

Forever is the best illusion

Created by humans

Just like Gods

Even sun and stars

Don’t last forever

Forever is a greatest irony

While we want to hold it

We don’t desire

Forever grief

Forever wars

Forever poverty

Forever inequality

Forever is the best false promise

We make to ourselves

In a transient world

Where nothing lasts forever

The best moments and joys

Are often short lived

Beauty lies in their brevity

Think of those flowers

Or our lives of our pets

While chasing forevers

We forget to live

Those precious moments

Which perhaps make our forevers

Our memories too

Don’t last forever

With time they fade

Grief and pain often

Linger and last longer

Sometimes forever

Inevitably Inevitable

Neither birth is our choice

Nor is the death

They are all accidents

Intentional or Unintentional

Serendipitous it is

Two brothers losing life together

In a car, perhaps they loved

Driving towards a destination

They never reached

A mother died while making

Her final cuppa of tea

Which perhaps she

Never got a chance to sip

A father too died years ago

While waiting for his evening tea

Which he too never got a chance to sip

It all happens in a fraction of a second

That’s all it takes to breathe in first time

Or to exhale for the last time

I hear a piercing wail of a new born

Perhaps still missing

The safe cuccoon of the womb

I hear the lament of an adult

Watching his mother’s hearse

And then we get the news of passing

Of young footballers who faced odds

But with talent that got recognised

They could afford a Lamborghini

Whose tires unfortunately gave up

Just like both the engines

Of that ill fated aircraft

Which crashed not too long ago

On the roof of a medical college

Whose students deaths

Never got counted

Just like the deaths of innocents

Which have fatigued and numbed the world

Does million have an extra zero?

We no longer count

The unaccountables

We know and accept

Death as fate

Inevitably Inevitable

It all depends on the moment (and nation)

Where you are born

Or destined to be

Or the place you are going to

Or where you are coming from

I see the news of a white student passing

In a white rich country

While looking for that dear Asian kid

Who died while trying to beat

The unprecedented heat

A river waves took him away

Then they tell me of passing

Of someone whose lungs gave away

Who chose cigarettes over his odds

We all are the risk takers

Our births are risks

Life is a risk

And so is our fight for it

And against it

Without choice we are here

Living, breathing it all in

The foul rotting smell

Fills our nostrils

Along with wafts of fresh fragrances

Of the new bloom

That’s how it is perhaps

Inevitably Inevitable

Both Life and death

A fraction of a second

A breath separating the two

A fraction of a second

It takes for the bombs to explode

Or a sniper to shoot

Those ill-fated hungry children

Who didn’t choose to be born

On that ill-fated land

Whose fate was decided

In the name of the imagined god

Gods who are yet to prove their existence

Do show up for these births and deaths

Between blessing little ones

In the name of God

And absolving the dead of their sins

The priests of the land thrive

While labs toil away

For that perfect elixir

To save us from ageing

And dying

An actress too died

While trying to be

Young and relevant

In a show business

How bizzare it is

How inevitably Inevitable

It all seems to be

Living ones getting on with it .

Winging it with AI, drones,

Botox and meditation

Adding new iterations

All in a circle

Of life and death

I stare at my nearly dead plant

Hit by the morning newspaper missile

Symbolic isn’t it?

The newspaper that carries

The news of death, wars and funerals

Nearly killed my plant

Inevitably Inevitable

Accident it is all…

We still cannot fully comprehend

That one grand design accident – Big bang

And then how down the line

Intelligently stupid

Life evolved

On this blue planet in the universe

A life that tries to comprehend itself

And has also turned upon itself

In a suicidal self sabotage

Inevitably Inevitable?

The rigged game goes on

So does poetry…

Ownership

We don’t own anything

Not even these words

Which are borrowed

From a language

Thoughts may be ours

But not entirely

They are formed by

All that we read and experience

In a dynamic shape shifting world

How can we own anything?

Our body cells start to shed

The moment we are born

Our ions and electrolytes

Are forever incomplete

Seeking bonds

Nothing is ever static and whole

Blood flow forms rivulets

All through the body

Do I own these cells, ions and atoms?

All formed from the star dust

Including the sun, our planet

How can we own anything at all?

We are just a blip, a heartbeat

In the grandeur of cosmos and

Timeline of universe

Yet in vain we try to possess and own

That piece of land, this piece of resource

People in our lives and their free minds

What for?

For that momentary

Lust for power and glory?

We play with lives 

Lives of others

While squandering our own

Nothing ever dies

It changes forms

We just own our made up 

Truths and lies

Our actions too are borrowed

From the history playbooks

We lack courage to love

So we choose deceit

Ilusion and grandeur

Happy in our bubbles

We float in an embryonic state

Feeding off the lives

Which we think we own

While we own nothing

Earth belongs to itself

It doesn’t give a damn

About our petty lives

Our politics and lies

The more we plunder

More it will make us pay

Just like any other landlord

Photo courtesy: Anuran – Researcher and photographer based in Paris