Nothing

The stars are like flowers

Emit light akin to fragrance

Though they may be dead

The dead speak to their kin

Through the ruins of time

Across vast distances

The distances do not matter

When the mind wants to know

If it came before or after

After or together or was there always

Always seems plausible for

Nothing cannot precede everything

Cordelia knows nothing can compare

What she feels for her father who has

To lose sceptre and crown to learn nothing.

Three alphabets

The nationalised bank greets clients

With a novel secular 'golu' of

Docile animals and meek humans

Whose days are as numbered

As the rest of us though we may

Find ourselves breathing longer

Than we would normally like to be,

The visually impaired are now offered

Magnifying lens to fill out their forms

Maybe even read the day's Hindi word

And go home and be inspired to learn

More such words the smart phone teaches,

Imagine learning a language under duress

Initiating a child into three alphabets.

Love in the sky

The air force planes rehearsing

For the coming parade, break

All civilian decibel limits,

Across  the sky copters draw the hearteen

Expressing their love for the nation

Finding new limits of the constitution,

One recalls the air raid sirens heard

In the clips from the West Asian wars

It wouldn't be fun to be at the receiving end

Of bombs, shells, missiles raining on us

Not to be a spectator sitting with a plate of cookies

But to be part of the chilling TV spectacles

Watching dream houses crashing, newborns

Blinded, maimed, killed, or worse orphaned

Would we cheer bombers heading out on missions

If we could see the targets as flesh and blood?

Moonlight

With each remembering, the past

Appears better than it was last time,

The distance of time makes it less bitter,

It is easier to forgive those who found

Pleasure in the pain they caused others,

With each remembering, the past

Seems something that happened

To someone else somewhere, not to us,

Like when we hear someone on the bus

Talking about their travails all these years,

Now that it's all over, let's not carry it over,

Remember not to resent, remember to forgive,

Do not forget the moonlight on the lake

The distant hillock shaped like an elephant

The half-heard song the breeze keeps alive.

Empty nest

Every janmashtami she invites

The eternal child home with

Flour footprints on the floor

Then has to keep telling

The transient child at home

To keep its feet off them,

The mother thinks the child

Has grown up too soon 

Forgetting all the nights

The baby kept them all awake,

Sees too footprints leaving her

Leaving behind an empty nest

Fragrances

Some fragrances are never forgotten

The smell of coffee in the morning

Even after you have stopped taking it

That of cigarettes you no more smoke

The odour of matchsticks you still like

When you light them for igniting the stove

The lungs don't find the incense agreeable 

The flowers for the framed favourite gods

Dare not evoke memories of the sensual

Though the metaphysical and saint-poets

Thought they were brides of the worshipped

If only you could have a whiff of the divine.

Alone

The moon is moving away 

From the earth but not too far

We cannot see it or forget it

The hills are meant to stay put

Not come tumbling after the rain

Burying alive those still far from

Their young dreams of growing old

To watch their young grow up as their

World slowly disappears into the mist.

Who can we pray to if who we pray to

Is eaten by the earth like the rest of us?

To feel alone is to find out there is no one

Out there looking out for us as we were told.