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.