Places

What we think
We have left behind
We have not left behind
More than the faces
The places appear
Before us as immediate
As before, as considerate as ever
The dusty streets remember
The frenetic feet of yesteryear
Want to know if they've arrived
The sandy school ground
Asks if you are certain
Where you stand
The church where you prayed
Before every hockey match
Knows you played as well as you could
The loco shed where the engine shuttles
Readying for another journey
Asks how the journey has been
Knowing all journeys must end.

Divine

Never fear what is not here

What is here is what is dear

It won't last, it's almost nightfall

What lasts, when the flowers fall?

Even the fragrance fades

When the memory pales

Who remembers the way

Who knows not to stay

When he left no one wept

For who sleeps when sleep has left

Who doesn't fly when the sky calls

What is mine when the curtain falls.

Grace

The day falls silent
When clouds fill the sky
With the promise of rain
The trees seem quieter
Even the birds only whisper
Peck at the grains with respect
For the hush that comes
Only at dawn and dusk
When time is at a loss for words
Does not know what it wants
Whether to rise or fade or disappear
All the world wants is grace
Though it will not mend its ways.

Morning

This is as cold as cold can be
This month when even the air
Shivers with hope and despair
For the reclining god to stir
From his death-like slumber.
We left our dreams hanging in the night
Teeth chattering in the mist
When it would have been best
To be at home, snug under the rug
Sleeping through yet another dawn
Not knowing what has gone ---
Enough of this waking and sleeping
When waking is more sleeping ---
This time we have risen before the sun
To wake the god with songs, the way
We put him to bed with the lullaby
Tell us what will wake us, to see
The world without the lies others weave
To see it for what it is, not to believe.

Evil

Does evil not know what it is
Is it so, because it is beside itself
It hates and feels it's right
As it is easier to hate than to love
It gathers the mob under its flag
That makes hatred respectable
Lynching an act of love
For the holy cows;
The good cannot hate
Even what hates it
For it knows what poison tree
Evil has eaten from
What fruit it has taken
At whose devious counsel
What paradise it lost
When it listened to the beast.

Grateful

To wake up every morning
To be able to see
To walk to the rest room
On one's feet
To be able to breathe normally
After all that smoking
In the early years
Watching the sun rise
One is grateful
For another day
There are so many things
To be grateful for ---
For what never sleeps
When we sleep
Neither when we are awake.

Crowd

In the crowd
The one is many
The many are one
The faces
Have no faces 
The feet hurry
They have something to catch
The minds are faster
Have arrived many times
The one
Who has stepped out
Has nothing to lose
Can watch till he is hungry
The feet go by
The feet go by
The feet go by.

Road song

With Ilaiyaraja's song
Playing in the ear
The ride home is not long
What's far looks near
Out of the mist
The past rises
What is missed
Hardly surprises
There were then, four of us
Taking tea with dawn and dew
Talking of this and that, more or less
Savouring the shop's first brew
When it silenced us
This ditty to a fresh, new day,
That never made it to the screen
So remained unsullied till date
The words never losing their sheen
Of the four, there's one less now
To go down that road with love.

Very near

Why do these gods
Speak an unknown language
That only the priest knows
Seem so fond of rituals
Full of fire and smoke
Ringing of bell
Circling of flame
Rapid-fire instructions
In one tongue
Chants in the other
Intervening for the dead soul
Now gone for three years
But still missed, cried over ---
Smiling from the photo
Decked with home-strung flowers
Offered his favourite dish
Father still seems very near

Holy

Where we want we want still
The feet have beaten a track
Across the steep hill
To a shrine in a shack
Where a deity once was
No one can pray to emptiness
Someone said, whatever the cause
The mind cannot hold formlessness
To worship air is to worship what is not
What we cannot see, we cannot be
Let there be no image brought
The old man said, to trap a sea
When we mark something sacred,
The hierarchy of holiness is born
The priest pits love against hatred
Man against god, flower against thorn
What we worship cannot set us free
If we are not moved by tears or agony
Where we want we want still
What we cannot own, we still kill.

Baby talk

The child's laughter
Celebrates what is
And what is not
As it tries to speak
The grown-ups
Turn into children
Glad to be able
To step back
Hear a language
Before it is language
When it hovers
Between sound and word
And not yet speech.

City blues

This is a city that seems to take
Forever to build, as it rises skyward
The cranes overlook the towers
Like monsters who are out to devour
All the ageing, the decrepit and the infirm
Who keep wondering where the places
They have known all these years are
The mall looks like a temple of desire
Where window shoppers outnumber
Those who come to splurge
The youth who come to gawk
Do not know the pain
Of changes they are not part of
Over which they have no say
They do not know how many
Pop and mom stores have been lost
For this monstrosity of extravagance
Guzzling power, water and air
As if it is in the first world
When all around is third world.

Sunset

In the hills
Though it is past seven
And it is expected to set by then
The sun lingers
On the horizon
Like an old friend
Tarrying at the door
To reminisce some more
Knowing there may not be
Another time like this
To remember together
Days that exist only
In the two minds
Before it is all snatched away
By the darkness
Never far away. 

Wisdom

What providence is this
That takes away your eyes
With the promise of the third eye
Fills your sleep with such sweet dreams
That you do not want to be awake
Wants you to suffer incarceration
Before it will even think
Of setting  you free
Makes you write ethereal bars
That you cannot hear
Gives you such hunger
When there is no food
Fills the table with such rich fare
Now that you are not allowed to eat
Makes it easier to hate than to love
Teaches the vanity of desires
After a lifetime has been lost
Chasing them like a lunatic
Why must wisdom come at the end
When the sun sets and there is no way
To begin all over again 

Mythology

Mythology comes in many avatars
The gods of yesteryear
Are action heroes now
Offer darshan in movie halls
Slay evildoers in every film
Perform superhuman deeds
Fly from building to building
Sometimes land on a moving train
That looks like miles away
Dodge bullets like cricket bouncers
Leap, hover, defy gravity, disbelief
To take on the demons single-handedly
Pack punches with one-liners
Deadlier than the blows they land
Declare that deliverance
Is at hand, sooner than later
When they appear off-screen
To carry out their impossible mission.

Things

In the dream there is nothing
Around me but the things that 
I coveted and couldn't keep
As I grew up
And hardly remembered ---
There's the new cricket bat
I kept under my pillow
The shoes I slept with
The three pictures
Of deities I no longer petition
Having seen the futility of desires ---
My late sister's framed painting
Of a peacock by a waterfall
I broke, is there too
The glass still cracked
How fragile we all are.

Thicker than water

Did you know that
All that we have lost
We can find in our dreams
Things, places or persons ---
The breeze that blows
The distant song away
Also brings it back
Half-heard is as heart-wrenching
As memory fills the words
We know by heart
Dreams bring back those
Who left without a word
They do not say
Where they have been
Or what they have seen
As if they are still afraid
Of those who slew them
Father, brothers and uncle
Who still think blood
Should not mix
And a woman cannot choose.

Wandering

And then he was often in dreamland
Where the trees sifted light
As with a sieve, kept the day like night
The lines between shifting forever
The dead and living crossing over at will
With no way to tell what time it was
Only that it looked like dawn or dusk
With the birds either rising or roosting
The old man was in a panic ----
Could not find his friend's daughter
Visiting the city for a job interview
'I asked her to wait here
Did anyone see her?'
Everyone around knew 
He was wandering now
Signaled to the auto he had caught
To go in search of the missing girl,
The  driver gave him a joy ride
Then dropped him off at his doorstep
He cheerfully entered his house
Demanding a strong coffee
The dreamland hardly remembered.   

Factory of discontent

How many times
Will I find myself lost like this
In a dream bordering on a nightmare.
This is not inside my factory
Which manufactures discontent
In three shifts
This is a five-star hospital
Where I am looking
For the exit
I do not trust anyone to ask
For fear of being misled
Then wander into a wedding hall,
(Now, hospitals are all multi-purpose),
Where a provocative politician
is calling an icon
Of the rival camp
The choicest names
Hoping to polarise votes
For the next election
The audience greets
His hate speech
With unrestrained glee
Among the crowd
I see the neighbour
Who is in hiding
After being accused
Of eating prohibited meat
By cow protectors
Who also double as moral police
What better place to be underground
Than in a dream, where a hospital
Is also a mall, a restaurant, a cinema
A wedding hall where speakers
Instead of blessing newlyweds
Curse their opponents
And their progeny
The absconding enemy of the cows
Points the way out to me
With sad, bovine eyes.

Chronic

Is there anything
More chronic than life
A relapse there's no way to stop
A relentless waking to
From a storm-tossed sleeplessness
That comes from the anomalies
Of the wakefulness
When the fires have to be fed
Again and again.
Those invested in the unseen
Offer an array of remedies
That guarantee no cures
Only fewer births
Before one can be freed
Of the disease of life.

Encroachment

Under the rubble
A heap of memories
A doll with a name
She could not retrieve
The shaft of sunlight
Swimming with dust
Intruding at day
The moonbeam at night
Dancing in with a dream
It was here her little sister
Woke up dead
Showed her first
That life could end too soon
Just like this
Their home brought down
As if they didn't matter
One way or the other   

Silence

In the silence
Something flowers
As if on cue
Brings with it
The strange hues
Of a dawn
No man has seen
Speaks of longings
From distant shores
That recede faster
Than we thought
Whispers songs
Still in the making
For those who can hear
With another ear.

Hunger

Through the window
The wind brings 
Someone's grief
At how it all went wrong
After a promising start
Complaining of the world
That blames the world
For its own misfortunes
Sees those of others
As just deserts
When everyone justifies
The ways of God
Who will justify
The ways of man
Who has to fight hunger
Till his last breath.

Caveman

In the city, night is no more night
The street lights defeat the darkness
Put it to flight; restless diurnal birds
On their uneasy perch protest
The excess of light, for a night;
For the sleepless the sit-out
Becomes a sentinel's lookout;
The bat circles by sound
The jamun tree rich with fruits
Like a besotted beau;
The white cat enters the opposite house
Through the window, comes out
In a minute through the grille gate
No one knows what he is after
On the pavement are lined up
Mirrored dented almirahs
Come for the festival makeover
The rodent hides behind them
Till the predator passes
Scurries across the road
The caveman who doesn't have
To hunt anymore
Watches the passing of the night

Desires

At night the distances disappear
Destinations that seemed so far away
During the day appear within reach
What can be will be, how can it not be
As long as we remember that yesterday
Need not repeat itself tomorrow;
This time the rains did not fail the river
Neither did the river the sea
If distress cannot be shared
How can we share bounty
At night it's possible to make peace
With the past, see things as they are
How far we have come, from where we were
Though we had to bury many desires on the way
So that others could travel light
At night, it is clear as day
That what we have
We cannot keep,
That what we cannot keep
Was never ours.

Return

How quiet the night is
When the dogs
Stop barking
When the mind
Stops talking
Of the past
When what is not
Is not a thought
And what is
Is all we've got
Those who have come
Have all been welcome
Those who have not
May still come
Trust the feet
To take us home
Home is where
We finally return
However far or near it is.

Music

This is music that cannot die
With the turn of the seasons
So rooted that it smells of flowers
That can only grow here
Has rivers flowing through the year
Fed by rain that never stops for breath
The wind whispers, sighs and sings
The birds don't know what to do, join in
When all others tire, the kuyil keeps on
The crows build nests for both
The hills appear out of nowhere
With their tall trees searching for the sun
Through the mists that cannot decide
Whether to be smoke or cloud or hope
That cannot be kept away for long
Like laughter that laughs at itself
Knowing that only a little that time builds lasts
Such as this music that no time can mark.

 

World of wonder

With a grandchild in the arms
The world is full of wonder
It's like looking at a tree
Before it was named
Hearing a bird sing
With a fresh pair of ears

The dawn is new every day
The sky is full of surprises
It seems time has slowed down
To hurry is unnecessary
As one points and names
What flies, what stands and grows
What flutters from flower to flower
Even looks like a flower that flies
One is grateful to the little one
For this second resurrection.

Buddha head

The fall hasn't erased
The smile of the buddha head
The dark face
Doesn't show
The hairline crack
That runs across it
One suddenly feels contrite
For having dropped him mindlessly
Apologises everytime one looks at him
Is this how inanimate objects
Turn animate, intimate
Companions in the loneliness
That time brings with time
Make us child-like again
Seeing life in the lifeless
Feeling for things
That are no more things.      

Home

Those who have left
What do they tell us
That the dead do not rise
In the way we want
Though resurrection
Happens all around us
All the time
The daughter realises
The mother's dream
As if she was born with it
The son is as feisty
As his grandmother
Though he has never seen her
Death cannot take away everything
The one who died on the cross
Was he the one who reappeared
Lighting the flame in every heart
Which had had enough of the darkness
And showing the way home
To those who really wanted to go home.

Priceless

What have we lost
That we grieve so much,
Who can help us
If we can't remember
What it was,
Was it all a dream
That was so real
That on waking
We thought we lost something
As priceless as a home;
We know we must search for
What we lost
Where we lost it
Can we go to sleep
And wake up in the dream
To find what we lost.