Misty Afternoons

Bright afternoons

cloaked in mist—

Like wisps of sorrow

that roll into the heart

in Spring,

Snaking across beds

of dewy roses

and fulgent dahlias,

To slumber in

the yew tree’s silence.

Happiness is an epidural—

A brief respite of light
in this ceaseless labour
To birth new selves
with each sunrise.

THE FORBIDDEN BIG APPLE

I am crossing the seven seas

To wash off your smell

From my mothball-stuffed drawers that I

open and close—obsessive-compulsive,

In classrooms and coffee shops,

Conference halls and airports,

On the streets or in bed--

A fresh-rain aroma of musk and dead roses

brewed in desire and betrayal,

Suffused with midnight kisses and racing away

on white steeds in chivalrous reins.

But I do not know if all the waters

Of all the oceans can ever achieve that task,

and I know all I really need to do is take off

these glasses that I hold in tremulous hands—

these rose-tinted glasses that have

made me hope against despair,

love against knowledge, want against wisdom.

But oh, I wouldn’t, I couldn’t

bring myself to do that,

Though it breaks my heart every fortnight

into slivers of china on a varnished floor;

Because then, when I am happy,

the whole world wouldn’t be New York.

ANOTHER 9/11

As American alchemy transforms

Third-world sweat and blood

into their Starbucks and McDonald’s,

and builds empires upon the debris

of war-torn nations,

buying bread with bullets,

so the 9/11s of Chile, Egypt and the Jews of Nazi Germany*

get erased along with the fall of the Berlin Wall,

To make way for the 3000 dead in New York

on an azure September morning.

All lives are not equal.

Yesterday, on November 9, America waved into the

world’s gobsmacked visage

a racist, misogynistic, hate-spewing Trump card:

That too was a 9/11. For the rest of the world.

Yesterday, we had a 9/11 that crashed the

economy, converting coveted notes into

paper and nothing more.** As banks and ATMs shut down,

as if in mourning, and social media brimmed

with Trump-struck woe,

I felt for a moment the world shared in my grief—

A humongous pathetic fallacy—

My own 9/11 that splintered my days

into before and after, hijacked my life and

flew it into the skyscrapers of

Ceaseless Avarice, to burst into flames,

To hurtle down sans grace,

And to splutter in the ashes, facedown in muted sorrow:

Tragedy must be a class act, or spectators get bored;

No listeners for a broken piano, so you better soar.

A wannabe phoenix, this was my 9/11.

NOTES:

*Refers to the US-backed overthrow of the democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973 and the bloody dictatorship that followed; the signing of the Camp David Accords that signalled Egyptian and Arab humiliation on September 11, 1979; and the Kristallnacht pogrom by Nazis upon German Jews on 9 November 1938.

**On 9^th November 2016, 500 and 1000 rupee notes were demonetized in India, leading to widespread panic among the common man and bringing the economy to a stand-still

SONGS FROM THE HILLS

There’s a certain cold blueness

that wraps round the mountains,

slides down the pepper vines

choking the spiky coral trees,

blooms with the elaichi buds in the backyard,

and brews in the black tea

that you sip, shivering under blankets.

Sweaters and mufflers can ward off the chill,

But what do you do when the soul feels cold?

**********************************

Wisps of mist swirling over peaks

to embrace the snowy puffs

valiantly swimming through louring grey skies

that leak day and night, drip-drop-drip,

In a fine powder-rain.

*************************************

These hills, they hold secrets as ancient

as the hills themselves.

The oldest and the truest of them all?

“To love is to lose, and to lose is to love,”

whispered the wrinkled hills, with a sigh

that echoed in the wet valleys.

Poetry in a Time of Terror

Tonight I cannot write

Of love won and lost,

Dreams dreamt and burnt,

Palm fronds silhouetted in the moonlight,

Salty rivulets coursing down my back

in the summer heat.

Tonight I cannot write

Of twilights in russet splendour,

Jacarandas raining down on my graves,

Labyrinthine daily mundaneness.

Tonight, when flowers are doused with kerosene

and set afire; when the craggy moon spews blood; when nightingales

are strangled and sparrows hanged; when humanity is splintered

to make coffins for the young with old eyes;

when fetters festoon every heart and hearth;

when streets resounds with the footsteps of fear;

when they stifle, muzzle and muffle, with the mob behind

baying for blood—your blood—which

would be ideal to varnish their nation

which once was yours as well; when to think is to feel

is to question is to die—instant annihilation or a slow

dismembering of your memory, your history, your very being.

When ghettos spill over and smudge coffee tables, desks

and benches, parchments and temperaments; when the dappled tree

shades where we walked scream an eerie silence; when the letters

vaporise from the books we read; when the lakes

freeze in the centre, afraid to lap their shores,

and the peacocks forget to squawk; when the cold stars sing dirges

for the newly dead and dying, in a land where

they alone live who have already died—

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.

Tonight, with my son at my bosom breathing baby’s bliss,

I weep for the ashes of my yesterdays, and for his tremulous

tomorrows that shriek with outstretched arms.

TWO

Two little mynahs

sitting on a  hedge:

One for sorrow,

Two for joy.

A little girl who believed

in fairy tales,

Blue lotuses lived

in her midnight eyes.

Bread and butter,

Woe and mirth,

Lightning and thunder,

Breath and death.

Life is measured out in pairs—

A duet tuned to disaster:

Two tablespoons, please.

What do you do with a poem

whose couplets

refuse to rhyme?

Would you tear it up

into a million flakes

that snow down upon

your summers and springs?

Would you torch it alive,

Let the howls hound you for life?

Would you incinerate it,

Scatter the ashes

beneath your dreams?

Or would you keep rewriting

till your blood runs dry

and you run out of reams?

A sunrise frozen in a teardrop,

A bulrush gasping in a heath,

A forlorn slice of moon in a bedraggled sky,

Some couplets can never rhyme.

Education for Life

I waddle daily

to the carefree laughter

of youth—freshly flowered—

beneath the casuarinas,

The staccato banter and songs

drifting down the corridors,

The brightly sparkling eyes

that gaze upon endless vistas,

The polite smiles and good-mornings.

You kick and twist and drag me down,

rippling beneath my pulled-down dupatta,

Altering my life’s centre of gravity;

But I brush away the cobwebs and smile,

Acknowledge their greetings,

Maybe in memory of days

not long ago when I too

was one of them.

They say of woman:

Born weak,

And on top, pregnant.

I say:

Born strong,

And on top, forged in fire.

I see the passion

pulsing in their veins,

The dreams

that deck their hair,

The stars in their eyes.

Not so far removed in age,

But alas! I care no longer

for the sprezzatura

of roses and cards

and chocolates

and moonlit verses

and all that jazz.

I talk to them of human frailty

and mortality,

And beauty and infinity;

I teach them the nightingale’s rhapsody,

The desire to cease upon

the midnight hour with no pain,

To soar upon the viewless wings of poesy;

Metre and alliteration, stress and sprung rhythm,

Dialect and diglossia.

I see their eyes glaze over, some of them,

Lost in illusory enchanted lands . . .

I wish I could gently shake them

and teach them

The clanging, jarring

onomatopoeia

of reality,

The falling tone of vanity and ideals

and hopeless romance,

The enjambement of disillusionment,

The deconstruction of truth.

But then I know I mustn’t.

I must let them feel it, taste it, live it

for themselves.

For what is life, if not these brief preludes

before grimness punctures the heart

and greyness punctuates your laughs?

If not the steely resolve that rises

like a phoenix to soar over the ruins

of the present to swoop down on that

liminal land of luminosity

that lies between knowledge and despair?

And I know that is what I must teach

these tender blooms before winter comes,

And you, my child, in the years to come.

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.

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.

MATURITY

You say I have matured,

Well, maybe...

But-

Ripened by Experience,

Weathered by Age,

Tempered by Time,

Or beaten by Life?

INTO THE LIGHT

She was worse than dead,

Or so they told her.

Defiled, impure, plundered...

Worse than dead.

Her life was now torn into

before and after:

Before-

she had coffee with her colleagues,

baked brownies with her niece,

wore his favourite colours.

After-

she drank sympathy at tea breaks,

bored her niece with her silence,

wouldn't meet his eyes.

Worse than dead.

Should I just kill myself

to make it better, she wondered,

Standing at the brink of the cliff,

the wind yowling in her ears,

the cold scalding her skin.

Maybe then the ice would thaw

and the birds would sing....

Deep in thought, she slipped

into a dreamless slumber,

The razor in her hand.

GENESIS

Where do poems come from?
From azure blue skies
and candyfloss clouds,
Rolling green fields,
And soothing sonatas?
From a candlelight dinner,
Or a walk in the woods,
From being content,
Ensconced in love?

Do they drop like dew at night,
Like iridescent rain drops from leaf tips?
Do they waft in like the aroma
of freshly brewed coffee,
Gently, like a sleeping baby's breath;
From the velvet feel of the perfect bliss
of perfect moments in an imperfect life?
Or do they bound in with glee,
Like laughing children or feisty kittens?

Occasionally, they do come like that,
From all of that.

But much more often, they come
from fearful stormy nights,
When you're all alone and the power is out,
and you clutch a pillow,
your jagged breath louder than thunder.

They come from a terrible loneliness
that chokes you as you make your way
through a festive throng,
From pain that swamps you
as you stand in a crowded bus,
Among a hundred oblivious faces.

They come from standing at the crossroads
on a chilly evening while darkness rolls in,
Not knowing which road to take
to reach home, before you remember
You don't have a home.

Yes, the most powerful ones,
They mostly spring from stifled screams
and tattered dreams:
They emerge from squalor and despair,
And carry the stench of death.

They come when you dare to mute
the vibrant hues around,
Step aside and look at the greys,
the frayed ends, at the risk of being
Sucked into the black.

GHAZAL

Let us go away, you and I,
Far away from the spying sky.

Here stars and jasmines bloom at night,
But blood streams from the sighing sky.

Love must waft in like evening breeze,
Must burst like rain from heaving sky.

I need no adornment but you-
And stars plucked from the dazzling sky.

Your love finds me wherever I hide,
Even underneath the sprawling sky.

Cut Off

' As flies to wanton boys, so are we to the gods,

they kill us for their sport.'
- Shakespeare, King Lear

I often lost his voice on the phone-

Bad network

Disconnect

Re-dial

Dialling

How would you even know

if I die, he used to jest.

I'd reply with silence,

it silenced him for the moment.

We hanker to buy with

bleeding bits of the heart,

The cologne of love:

Sometimes so costly

it leaves you with no heart at all.

Just a pulsating void

like the bleeding silence

at his end when I said

"I love you";

And then, (finally),

"I love you too, three, four, five..."

He loved his bike.

Faster, faster, Death cheered him on;

School kids race in the rain,

Splashing mud on me.

As the boat gently bobbed
away from the shore,
Little did I know
it had no oars.

They laid him to sleep

and threw earth over his dreams,
My cat gave birth to three
kittens that day.

Dust to dust returneth;

I to him.

Dial

Dialling

Beep beep beep.

Re-dial

Switched off

Cannot be reached

Out of coverage area

Does not exist.

On the Ferris Wheel

We rise higher and higher,
Green canopies ramble
beneath us;
Wet petals sleep on rainy sidewalks-
Windblown lilac dreams gently
heaving with teary sighs.
Bright lights, bright awnings,
Bright nameless faces
Peer up at us.
City lights of sleepless nights,
An unknowing faraway glimmer,
Unfeeling, like the blinking stars overhead.

Up and down, up and down,
Faster and faster, we move,
Slicing through the dark,
Brushing past branches,
The cool air rushing into
the vortex of my being-
A vortex that sucks in
You, Me and everything else.

We move in circles, so does life....
Or does it? Some points of beginning
can never be returned to,
Some trajectories, once distorted,
can never be retraced.
Some paths, once lost,
are lost forever;
You see, some circles are never finished.

Some things are just not meant to be:
Some things like You and Me.

Home lies somewhere there,
Home sweet home, shrouded with innocence,
Somewhere there, at an unreachable distance.

We swing up, and swoop down
Like eagles to prey on
Life, that crawls along below;
And that's all that's meant to be,
as we step out, laughing-
God knows why....

A Try at Translation

The song 'Ithaloornnu veena panineer dalangal', from the classic Blessy film 'Thanmathra' (released in 2005) that tells the poignant tale of an Alzheimer's patient,  is one of the most beautiful Malayalam songs I ever heard. I am struck by its sheer poetry every time I listen to it. Hats off to Kaithapram mash for the amazing lyrics. Given below is my humble attempt at translating the song. Hope all of its beauty is not 'lost in translation'. :)

Like fallen rose petals joining back together
And humming in tune,
The fair moon blooms in my palm like a flower,
A new song arises from these tear-drained silences.

Even the sun that everyday comes
To reign during the day
Descends the steps at midnight
And vanishes.

Don't cry, my beloved,
Don't shed tears,
The sun will come again
At dawn to this sky.

Arms of the wet darkness
Full of lightning bangles,
Rain drops casting pearls on the lotus leaf;
Just a second to remember,
An age to cherish in the heart.

Even this memory's a celebration
Life's a song.

At Peacock Lake

The glassy blue of the fallen sky,
Creased with myriad ripples
That bound forth
To the waiting arms of the shore,
Like little children to their mothers,
Singing of peacocks and wild winds
That make the reeds, thickly spread
By the water's edge,
Dance in beauteous glee-
A wave of gold-tipped green.

And into my heart ecstasy drips,
Till I can swim in it-
Lake of bliss.


Peacock Lake is one of the loveliest and most popular hotspots in our campus and obviously, I am not its only fan. You might also like to see my friend Lipin's brief take on it . He has also put up a snap of the lake.

AMBIVALENCE

Your black is my white,
Your blue is my red;
The cold knifes through me
And lays me dead,
In a grave where
Love blossoms
In bloody trails.
You killed me
The day you embraced me,
Even as an unknown part of me
Leapt to life in your arms.
In your life, I find death,
In your death, I find life;
And yet without you, my deadly beloved,
An I-less I am I.

NIGHT

The night speaks
In a thousand tongues
I cannot discern,
Rising above the cries of the crickets-
Midnight's minstrels.
Pale blue melting around
Feathery canopies reaching
For a trembling dawn.
Muted roars pulsating
In the night breeze
Charged with the cold
And peacock squawks.
And the swarthy goddess
Lets down her hair
And dances in a frenzy,
Punctuated with laughter
In a tongue I recognize-
Cold, hard, mirthless mockery.


P.S. : Before you get bothered, let me assure you- yes, I did mean peacock squawks.The Hyderabad Central University campus (where I am presently)  abounds with peacocks. Peacock cries also function as the rooster's "clarion call" here! And if you have been reading my blog regularly (fat chance there, I know! :D), you will already be aware of my fixation with everything about the night. One of the best things about HCU, I feel, is that it's safe to roam about within the vast (2800 acres) campus even late at night. This poem seeped into my mind on a solitary late night ride back to my hostel from the library. And this also happens to be my first post after landing in HCU. Life is quite hectic here (and fun too), but I'll try to find the time to update this space regularly and visit ur blogs too. Hope you are all doing fine. Take care. C ya! :)

Fireflies at Night

Fairylights strung
on the night
on invisible wires,
Softly flaming winking fires.


Stars fallen from the sky,
yellow and ripe;
Entangled in black leaves
on black boughs.


A glittering crown
adorning the night's frown.