Friday, July 11, 2014

HOME

Home is —
Flowers growing
from cracks on mossy walls,
Raindrops bathing
dusty window panes,
A milk moustache
and day-long pyjamas,
Footprints in autumnal quiet.

Words
that do not fly away
at your soul’s footfall,
Silences
without jagged edges
that cut your fingers.

Slanting sunlight
serenading you on the porch,
All-season monsoons
that splash, spray and sway,
Greenness that drowns
out your blueness,
A meadow to graze your roots.

Arms that aren’t afraid
to embrace
your aching brittleness,
Hot chicken soup on stormy nights,
Stars that sing lullabies,
Sunrise at midnight.

Wednesday, July 2, 2014

TWILIGHT AT MOULA ALI




Buttery mellow evening
slathered across the city
enfolded in enigma
hundreds of feet below.

Tranquillity tossed with
windswept dreams
against a preening sky,
That slowly dabs her cheeks
with hues of pink and mauve,
Checking herself out in
smoky lakes underneath,
Like a coy girl setting out
on a first date.

The azaan glides out
from minarets far and near,
Rending the stillness,
Rippling in the soul;
Dollops of divinity
dripping through the dusk.

And now the city lights up,
Hopes flickering to life,
One after the other;
Thousands of concrete lives
sprawled out beneath us,
Like earthen lamps set
afloat on a swarthy river.



Streetlights and headlights,
Neon billboards and lamp posts,
Suspended afar in the velvety darkness–
Disembodied voices from the past
singing silences of yesteryear.

Pyaar, ishq, mohabbat
Fireworks burst upon the firmament
in colourful melancholy,
Love works in ways you cannot fathom.

Rooh, ashq, maut
How would it be
to float off this edge,
to the lights that beckon below,
Like a feather waltzing in the breeze,
A petal swirling down a stream….
Love is not for the weak-hearted.

Tender is the night,
She yields no answers.