Thursday, October 31, 2024

River

I want to see my river

Be a river again 
Stand on its north bank
Watch it flow past me
With the temple towers
Watching me from the south
I want to just watch it
Without the myths, 
Without the words
Without the past
Without the future
Watch myself being swept away.










Monday, October 28, 2024

Redeemer

It cannot get any more bizarre

Than this, in the wonder that's Bharat
For a lordship admits to seeking divine 
Counsel for a verdict in a case
The minor deity is party to,
At a crime review meeting in Ram rajya
White monks perform a bhajan as
Young police officers clap to the beat,
Closer home in the land of Periyar
An actor wearing the neta hat equates
The fascists and those battling them
Promises the people freedom from both ----
Minions fight to sing the praises of a puppet
And ask why he cannot be the new redeemer.














Thursday, October 24, 2024

The mind is not old

When the feet turn unwilling

You can talk all you want
But cannot make them walk
Like they used to and take you
Wherever you want them to go
You remind them of the trek
In the pathless hills cliimbing
Through shrub and rock racing
With those taking the beaten path
Were these the same feet now
Unable to shuffle to the nearest shop?
The mind remembers the early morning
Dip in the Ganga in the coldest month
The body shivers now though swathed
In thick sweaters and shawls in a city
That is considered warm by the young
Even during its yearly cyclonic weather
The mind refuses to grow old even when
The eyes see the world through a haze
As silhouettes and shapes and shadows.


Thursday, October 17, 2024

Nature

Hunger is the clock we live by

Its chimes we cannot ignore
Sensuality is a secret pleasure
We cannot tell the world
Where does this sense of exile
Come from when we have no home
To go back to or recall with love?
We cannot take refuge in Nature
As it too turns the rooted to refugees
All of us are migrants from somewhere
Like birds, fleeing winters or worse
But we cannot go back like them,
It is good to know the sun will burn out
And even the earth we cannot call home.

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Wordlessly

Tired of the television chatter on

Low pressure, troughs, depression
Upper air circulation, wind speeds
Flooding of roads, traffic snarls
Disruption of routine, unplanned infra
Explosion of population, party politics
I switch it off to go watch the rain fall
Wordlessly ravishing, like an act of mercy.



Saturday, October 12, 2024

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.


Friday, October 11, 2024

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.