Tag: life

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

Being a Woman

Being a Woman

There is a lump
Stuck in my throat
It can’t be removed
Surgically
It just stays there
Just like the abyss
In my heart or perhaps brain
I keep sinking into
A free fall
With no rock bottom
With no voice
To scream for rescue
Not sure whether
There is a rescue team
As neither my internal abyss
Nor lump in my throat
Is visible or audible
That’s what it is
For most women
I am told
You learn to stay afloat
Put a brave front
And you scream internally
Without letting out a whimper
You accept praises and criticisms
Whatever comes your way
You assume you have a purpose
Or a role
Until you decide to step away
From the roleplays
To realise
You are invisible too
The world never sees you as a person
But rather as a wife or mother or sister
You step away
And you are reduced to a nobody
How liberating is that!!
They care only till you care
You like a fool kept caring
Letting them humiliate
The Law of reciprocity
Is always learnt a hard way
But apply it
Just like everyone does
In every other sphere
You will see
What you hold together
Collapses as a pack of cards
And then you realise
The cards were rigged
With misogyny
To remain as an object or
As a person with lump
In the throat
And Abyss in the heart
To sink without a sound

Step and snap out now
Out of the roleplay
To find your own voice
And your sense of balance
You will be visible
To those who want to see you
Rest do not matter
At least you will be visible
To your damned self

In that damn mirror!

Image courtesy: Anuran Kar Gupta, Physics researcher based in Paris

War – A Grim Reality Show

It almost unfolds live

On Social Media

On Television

Whipping emotions

As short lived

Till the next reel or news

There is a race

Turn it into an epic

Before the elections

Even before it ends

Scriptwriters have no clue

How will it end?

Or will it end at all?

Who has the controls?

Nations who are sparring?

Or nations who sell

Arms and weapons

To both sides fairly?

Is this an long over due upgrade?

Of war technology?

Old stocks need to be used or sold

For the new ones replace them

Weapons lead to wars

Or wars lead to weapons?

Damn the vicious cycle!

Everyone wants to stay in power

Even when they don’t have any

Wars and revolutions rarely go by the script

They often go rogue, off the script

Resilience and resolute is never factored in

Soldiers become immune to killing

And civilians learn to mourn the loss

They understand they are

Important but

Unacknowledged collaterals

Unbelievable!

What a techno-feat!

We witnessed and debated genocide

Inbetween binge watching shows

Even if war comes home

We will watch it on screen

Not realising the proximity

In denial glued to the screens

Life must go on after all

Everything is for greater good

Even the greater evils!!

Time Stood Still


Time stood still
We giggled and giggled
Like a pair of good old kids
But in their fifties

Time Stood still
As we stared at those benches
In the front of the canteen
Where we often sat and sang

Time has stood still
In that college campus
When pleaded the guard
To let us in

We went back in Time
Through those gates
Perhaps to seek our younger
Gullible, ugly and clueless selves

We patted on their backs
For making it through 
For finding each other
To make up lost time

But who knew
All sand was about to slip
In that damn hourglass
For one of us

What a chance it was
That we took
Instead of standing each other up
We finally showed up

And we made the Time
Re-wind and replay it all
We relived our nostalgia
And made fresh memories

Re-unions are the sweetest
They take us back in Time
To meet ourselves and find love
Even if it is for one last time!

The Bell


For Whom will the bell toll?
In fond remembrance
Of ones we lost?
Or for us who lived?

The bells can no longer
Keep the count perhaps
The bell no longer tolls

Where are the Hemingways and Orwells?
The ones who toiled
In armies and in kitchen
To write about how it felt
To hear those bells

For whom will the bell toll now?
And how long?
Wars are unending
Ceasefires rarely cease fire

The bells can no longer
Keep the count
Of who is on which side
Who is the winner or loser?

And whom should it toll for?
The ones who lost yet won
Or ones who won yet lost
The bell no longer tolls

There are mourners
But no graves
There are lovers
But no love

For whom will the bell toll?
For you and me
Or for the one who went away
And who can no longer hear

Time has set itself free
It doesn’t count anymore
How can it possibly measure?
What we no longer value

6/3/25
Bangalore

A Place Called Home

For some it’s a place to return to

For some it is a place to escape from

For some it is a place they cannot return

And for some it is a place they cannot escape

A Place Called Home

That illusive space in time

Where we think we belong

The place to fight for

Or die for

A Place where we wake up

And go to sleep

A space where we thrive

It becomes an identity

Pride and asset

A place called Home

Yet it doesn’t take much

To tear it down

The home of your childhood

Or to lose it to the occupiers

Who too think it is theirs

A Place Called Home

Wars are fought and lost

A lifetime is spent as refugee

What remains is in our memories

And in imagination that illusive space

A Place called Home

Where I am me

Unapologetic me

A place where we can be

Let alone in peace

To go on with our daily drudgery

Watch our flowers bloom

While I looked for it

A place called Home

I didn’t realise

I was home within me 

On this planet 

Which is our home

We often fail to protect 

While fighting to save our idea 

Of a place called Home 

Unseen


They are in plain sight
Yet they are invisible
They are dismissed
Ignored, unloved
By life itself

Who condemns them
To remain unseen
Unheard and unknown?
Just like blank spaces
In between words

Once you erase them
All sentences seem
Gibberish
Blank spaces that filled in
Also gave meaning

Alas! Life too needed
Such lives
unseen, invisible
Lurking around
Humiliated

Blank spaces
Humiliated by words
Unseen in sentences
Yet giving meaning to
Those very words

When will we learn
To respect
Those unseen
Invisible
But essential?

15th Feb, Bangalore

My Dear City…

What do I say to you

My dear city?

Should I regret the joys

I was robbed of ?

Or should I thank you for

Gifting me a new me?

I have smiled and cried too

On these shores of the sea

The sea that you seem to hide

I came around a full circle

What I thought was a closure

Became a spiral

Yet I am back here

Asking no questions

Nor seeking any answers

Your hidden vast shores

Are welcoming as always

As though waiting to hear

My song again!!