Disrespect

At the crematorium
The silence is intolerable
For friends handholding
The bereaved son
Waiting for the ashes,
Their grief is short-lived ---
They hasten to the mundane,
Lament the hike in property tax;
Compare electricity bills
Envy the colleague
Who has consumed the least;
Someone says driving a car 
To office and back
Through peak hour traffic
Is no more a pleasure
All agree it's better to take the metro;
They gossip with glee
About another who couldn't come
Who is still without a permanent residence

Not smart enough like them
To have a roof of his own;
They seem glad
To engage with issues
That should seem trivial
In the presence of death
Even disrespect
To the memory of the dead;
For them it's a colleague's father
They knew and did not know
Just an old man whose number was up
Once they return home
There will hardly be any talk of him
For the son or even more for the daughter
There will be a ceaseless swell of memories
That will turn the night as sleepless as the sea

Desert

The desert is not always
Just a sweep of dunes
Lack of greenery
With an excess of sun
It can be an absence of tears
A dryness of heart
That watches agony
In unmoved silence
And may even smile
But the rain
Doesn't skirt the desert
It doesn't give up on it
Even if nothing 
Grows there now
Knowing what could lie
Dreaming under the sand
May stir to life
When it's time to die

One last time

In her twilight years
Long-buried memories
Surfaced with a surprise
An English school prayer
We hardly knew she knew
She recited in one breath
And correctly pronounced
Words like cuisine, madame
We hardly heard her use before
We got to know she favoured turquoise
As a child
"The colour of the sea
We saw in Goa"
We learnt she visited the place
With her father the year before he died
"Everything went adrift after that"
She said and often fell silent
As she brooded on the dark years
She was able to escape after her marriage
Which explained why she bought soaps
Hairoil, shampoo in excess
Every month and hoarded them
Cooked extra for the unexpected guest
Liked to feed the hungry
Gave the same rich fare she ate
For the nocturnal alms-seeker ---
When she was fading she always spoke
Of the dishes she was fond of
And couldn't have as a child
And now she was not allowed to have
Before I could give her the sweet she wanted
One last time, mother died in her sleep.

When it's time

It's only when you have to leave
That you most want to stay
Stay back to grieve
Over that which never can stay ---
Never was sundown so serene
The gathering darkness more marine
The hills and the hollows may never have been
With the whispering mist coming between ---
This cold as welcome as rain down there
Seeps through sheepskin, skin, even deeper
The spooky wind shakes the window
Keeps at it through the night, cannot let go
Till you let go of the night and find a new day --
When you have to leave, what's there to say?