When it rains

Raindrops on cartops 

Catch a free city ride

Clouds cross puddles 

As the sky watches

It is difficult to tell 

If the rain or the child

Is happier to see the other 

When it rains

Mother is most remembered

For the fritters she conjured up

For her last wish

I did not fulfil

Because I was away.

Time

The evergreen song playing

On the television tells me

Time is running out for me

As well as for my peers,

An hourglass metaphor

Has survived the coming

Of watches and clocks

Once living near rail tracks

The passing trains marked

The express passage of time

But my train was yet to arrive;

This ancient tree is in no hurry

Its seasons arrive and leave leisurely

When the gentle breeze ruffles it 

It dances in quiet pleasure

When the monsoon wind seizes it

It fights with spirit, doesn't fall;

When we walk around the temple city

We do not know how many layers

Of time we walk on, what buried secrets

Lie under our feet, trapped like genies ----

It's time to say goodnight, not goodbye.

A fearful harvest

Riots begin in the mind as fear

Planted by those who harvest it

It is turned into hatred of what

Is feared and goaded to obliterate

The other, lacking in numbers ---

When the minions of evil have

Had their fill of kills that would

Have horrified horror itself

Women willed men to violate

The women of the enemy

Shaming shame itself ----

When the fires have been doused

The dead buried and bemoaned

Cases filed against predator and prey -----

The survivors rendered refugees

Can still pray for the return

Of the mind which cries

For others and feels their sorrow

As no different from its own.

Longings

The valley covets the hills

The city yearns for the village

The present wishes for the past

When the past wants tomorrow

All those who have arrived

Did not want it so soon

All those who have set out

Can hardly wait to arrive

The moon rises full of longings

The night flowers bloom quietly

Their fragrance they cannot hide

Love makes the crickets sing

When the eyes close dreams arrive.

Evil whispers

The absent are present everywhere

I cannot look at the rain without

Thinking of you looking at it

From wherever you are 

Singing an impromptu paen

The unseen bird cannot hide his love

Keeps calling out to the unseen mate

A former workplace turns into a maze

In a recurrent morning dream

The hawker uses a recorded voice

That could well be his daughter's

The great leader in blue suit

Still calls out the fascists in disguise

What happened to the code of honour

Not to lay a finger on women or children?

Manu reappears, as patriarchal as ever

Everytime a woman is dishonored

Evil lies restless in every head

Whispering for lines to be crossed

For the other to be birthed, 

For Eden to be breached.

Grief

The rain droplets leave little dots 

On the balcony floor making me

Draw a pattern with my eyes,

The drops soon thicken, hopping

Like children allowed at last to play, 

When it starts pouring as if it cannot 

Stop even to catch its breath, the mind

Hopes it won't turn into a cloudburst

Like the day father died when thought

To be invincible even in the face of death

The flow of memories was like this

And the heart wanted to wail but couldn't

In front of so many eyes eager to watch

Someone crack and show the shards,

When the urn was given to the waves

The sky, the sea and earth had all

Become one single roiling world

Whose grief no crying could stanch.

Contradictions

Everyday I look for words

To tell what I have seen

The looked at when they hear 

What I have to say laugh at

What all I have failed to see;

After man first set foot on the moon

The fabled old lady disappeared

When the house lights are on

The old ghosts dare not appear

Those who launch moon landers

Do not baulk at invoking god

For the success of their mission

That rides on human ingenuity

The orthodox present keeps up

The time-worn rituals of the past

Wanting to keep what cannot last

What flees when questons are asked

What to say of those who still believe

That touch pollutes, god is untouchable

For all but the twice-born, well-versed 

In a dead language, spoken by few

The priests fled when the virus spread

Shutting down all their holy places

When I caught it myself refusing the jab

I took all the medicines but prayed I  survive.

Nothing like night

The Shiva mantra painted on

The wall of the opposite house

Is what I see first at first light

In a post-cataract vision test

The way the superstitious look

At their cupped palms first

When they wake up again

After a night of blessed sleep

There was a time when

A sea-like lake greeted me

Back home in the temple city

When I looked out every morning

Across the acres of paddy fields

Being turned into real estate;

The sun blazed a path of fire

Over the distant blue waters 

Asking me to go past the horizon ----

Now that all illusions have been destroyed

It's soothing to see the sun set

Behind the dizzy high-rises

Rather than see it rise over them

With demands that cannot be met

Night is a time to look forward to

When the long day can be put to bed

Nostalgia

To walk again on the native town's streets

Is a rendezvous with memories 

Better left alone like sleeping dogs

One feels like a stranger in one's own land

Where no one knows one anymore

The feet rush past the old haunts

Afraid of what all one may remember

The triumphs on the playground and elsewhere

The compliments, the pats, the applause

The mocking of time with the few friends

When sleep was put away till dawn arrived

All the heady times may never have happened 

Are now so far away that they may well

Belong in dreamland where wishes

Are often fulfilled when they cannot be

In the waking world often as dreamlike.

Moon of the dead

It's full moon tonight,

I have to ritually remember

My mother, light a lamp at home

Pray for peace to her soul ----

When have I ever forgotten her

That I have to remember

Only once every month;

The moon will fade to a new one 

When my father will be thanked

For sacrifices that very few know of

The dead remind us of our own

Mortality that we often forget.

Reason tells me there is no life

After death we have to brace for

There is no heaven to reward us

Or hell to pay for our sins;

These rituals keep memories alive

When forgetting your past is taught

To be a virtue so that a mythical one 

Can be written over it and your ancestors

Painted as evil whose death you celebrate.

Ghosts

Sometimes the ghosts in the mind

Tumble out into the house at night

Seem to occupy the dark spaces

When one cannot switch on lights

Not to disturb the sleeping humans

The slightest scrape from somewhere

Turns non-believers into now believers

Since grown-ups have to act like one

Assistance cannot be sought for

The fearful journey to the rest room

The literarily bent hark back to My Days

Where the author talks of spirits he saw

Running around his bed in a Chennai flat

Even humorists cannot lie in memoirs

The sussurus of the tree at the window

Is maybe the arboreal goblin whispering

But nature's call is an imperative that

Even the fallen archangel cannot deter

No one sees one dashing in and out

Pulling the bed sheet over the eyes

Swallowing pride and invoking the divine.

Night street

The stillness of the night street

Even for a few minutes is startling

As we are so used to seeing it move

All through the day as if it were alive

It now looks like a painting we can

No more enter having stumbled out of

Where have all the dogs disappeared to

They would have kept the noise going

Linking the neighbourhood with their

Relay barking trailing the stragglers

We cannot be quiet with ourselves

Without drowning the disquiet of the mind

With a book or music or film or YouTube

Where new realities are made and unmade

Dear darkness

 These days the dawns remind me

More of the roseate glow of sunsets

The yearning is for the quiet fall of night;

Before the streets surrender to the frenetic

Flow of time and desire and animal spirits

Last night's dreams hang like mist in the air

The dead have not given up on us even now

Take the time to visit us quietly when we sleep

We cannot blame them anymore for our ills

For we see how helpless they must have been

As we are now against forces bigger than us

My colour blind father gifts me on my birthday

A loud pink flowered shirt I cannot possibly wear

A green butterfly rises from it and flutters away

Into the darkness in search of real flowers.

Sunset is too far away as is dear darkness.

Medicine men

Old age is when we get to visit

The doctor more than friends

As conditions get chronic,

The vocabulary gets better

With the medical Latinisms

Picked up at the clinic

The prescriptions make

Much more sense now

As fs and pp we have learnt

Are short for fasting and after food

The quotes hung on the wall

Are so inscribed in the mind

That they appear in lucid dreams

It is a bad sign when specialists

Have to be sounded for diagnosis

The surgeons appear bloodthirsty

Ready to wield the scalpel

Given half a chance and insurance,

Happiness is when the cold disappears

On its own the very next morning

And the good old immunity is back.

Waiting

 The cell phone screen reflects

The tree canopy and the sun

Seen through it before I type this out

Hoping truth will arrive somehow

Without will or desire or effort

The religious songs from a shop

Keep me company as I wait

For the flour miller to appear

At his empty unit swept and silent

Like the medicine men perhaps

He likes his clients to wait

While he finishes his chores

Or maybe his Friday temple ritual

Waiting is what we do well

For something to turn up

When nothing will matter.

Time

The old man on the park bench

Mutters to himself something

He has read or heard somewhere:

It is easier to forget

Than be forgotten;

Time flies when young.

The green peacocks

That cannot fly

Turn red in season;

Time moves in various colours.

The parrots cannot be still or quiet

They screech from tree to tree

Seem always in a hurry;

Time is frenetic around them.

The funeral procession 

Pauses every now and then

To set off serial crackers

What are they celebrating

But the death of time.

Full moon

In the morning there is little trace

Of the night that put you to sleep

And lulled the mind with dreams

The slant shadows the sun causes

Trail you till they subside in darkness

Fear of transience darkens pleasure 

Every morsel has the shadow of the past

When hunger was a feared beast

The flames of the sacrificial fire

Cry for more than ghee and grain

They have tasted sacred flesh before 

To the invocations of the war god

The ones who wanted to enter portals

Not meant for everyone have perished

In fiery ways celebrated as divine union

Let the full moon bloom in every dark sky

Make everyone look up, learn to ask why.

Two dreams

There are two dreams

One we wake up from

One we cannot as it is

Too real to be unreal

The hunger singes

Till it is appeased

Again and again

The house is so big

It cannot be left behind

The wardrobe overflows

With clothes never worn

More than once or ever

For they turn out to be

Not what we wanted

There is another dream

That will not let us sleep

For we think it is our destiny

The purpose of our life

When life all around us

Shows it has no reason.

What is a dream worth

If it will not change reality

For those who cannot dream?

Water birds

Tomorrow is too far away

To even think of arriving

Today is what we want 

To leave far behind

Like we did yesterday

What was that dream

We can't remember

Like a previous life

Some insist we had

And we will have again

The actor says he invites

The characters he plays

For they are waiting

To come alive in him

Thoughts don't die

They only hide from us

We cannot be what we are

When we have been raised

To be what we have to be 

The pond is drying up

But we cannot desert it

Like the water birds do

The rains cannot but arrive.

Distances

This is the land of vast distances

Between deity and devotee

Language and prayer

Aspiration and arrival

This is the land of the lost

Those who have no roots

Forgotten where they are from

Named by others and called names

Yet this land is now coming to itself

For the earth and sea

Are now giving up their dead

Who tell the truth to their heirs

Of how the distances came to be.

Fallen awaken

The bird is back with its song

Though it cannot build a nest

It cannot let go of summer

Give love rest for a year or two

Life cannot wake up quietly

Like the sun does every day

The moon does when it rises

The stars when they come on

The words look at truth silently

Cannot describe what they see

For what is said is not what is seen

The world vanishes without desire

The fallen laugh for they have woken

Light cannot be nailed to the cross

Love that is buried is resurrected 

Hatred is shamed and goes into hiding.

Momentous

We have parted ways with time

Or time has parted ways with us

For the seasons here don't change

As if we had willingly foregone springs

Settled for yearlong, dark, cold winters

We did not ask for the certainty of slavery

To replace the uncertainty of freedom

This day looks like other days when

The destination is only vaguely known

And there is no one to ask where it is

Because it is not clear what it looks like

This moment when you do not know

Where you want to go, this moment

When you do not want to go anywhere

This moment when there is no distance

Between yesterday and tomorrow or

Between you and me, this moment

Is the moment is the momentous moment.

Empty walls

A kite and a crow's nest

Are almost all that remain

On the peepul's branches

Before the new leaves arrive

So much of the blue sky

Can now be seen behind it

But the bareness of the tree

Is like the vast empty walls

Of a house you just moved into

Before memories can be mounted

As if touched by this thought

A passerby who has found out

About his own transience

Returns to stand barehearted 

Before the bareheaded giant

Asking why man cannot stay.

Eyes

The eyes cannot stop seeing

Even when it is time to sleep

Cannot let go of the scenes

Seen through the day's travel

The trees flow past in rows

Sometimes with flowers

Sometimes wearing none

Greenery is never tiresome

Impatient colours join in

Want to be seen all together

That we can't tell which is which

One shade from the other

The hills cannot be left behind

Come dancing around us

Asking how they look now

When blue they were from far

The lure of heaven is in its distance

What is easily had is evanescence

Summer

 March is the month of falling leaves

When trees shed the old for the new

With the sun ending its unilateral truce 

And renewing its hostilities in a new year

It's war again in every exam-bound school 

As teachers marshal their students for

The final do-or-die battle that will decide

Whether they will get educational nirvana

On the streets the primal struggle goes on

The vendors of water melons are back

Their tricycles parked at vantage corners

The pink slices make the thirsty thirstier

The earth and sea cannot bear to see

The people suffer, soon whip up clouds

That set the heat-cold cycle in play again

Summer comes but trailing monsoon rain.

Seeing no evil

 With my new glasses I felt I had new eyes

I stopped to read signboards on the way

As enthused as would be a newly literate

The old letters seemed freshly painted

Though the odd word was spelt wrong

Even mistakes did not look out of place

All women were beautiful with ear-rings

As huge as wall hangings or festoons

Their hair bands matching their clothes

The messages on the backs of autos

Highlighting the virtue of work or faith

Were as legible as their number plates

If the vision continued to be as good as this

Jiddu's observation without thought

Could be as easy as breathing in and out

Or seeing no evil when the eyes don't doubt.

Homemaker

The night is full of regrets

That sleep makes us forget

The day comes back with hope

Leaves us little time to mope

The house is often like a child

Tending towards the wild

Things not put in their place

Can find ways to hide

As long as the hands are busy

The mind takes it easy

The feet clock miles without

Having hardly stepped out

The chores keep at us

Like waves that never rest

Maybe more is in store

That I not know of as yet

The sun sets with a sigh

That quietens the sky

Till the hunter turns in 

The lights will be burning

To be alone with the past

Is to mourn the lost

Whom sleep brings to life

In dreams where lines are crossed.

Premonition

We dream of those we want to see

Of places where we want to be

What is this train we are regularly late for

This maths exam we are never ready for

Sometimes the faces are of strangers

Are they one or made from many

Who passed us on our way day to day

But to whom we had little to say

If dreams are often life-like

What of those real-life occurrences

That can only be called dream-like

That night when we were about to sleep

I clearly heard my brother call my name

The voice came from the backdoor

What was he doing there at this hour

When he was supposed to be at home

Five hundred miles west from here

No one was seen when we went to look

The telegram soon followed of his death

After being falsely accused of theft by father

I still think he came to bid farewell to his sister

Even if no one knows if we live thereafter.

The last one

In the class the blackboard

Turns silent when wiped clean

The children pretend to be quiet

With their eyes talking to one another

The teacher battles to shepherd minds

That wander over imaginary pastures

To be in the moment is hardly learnt

Till the last moments are upon us

Dying is nothing new as the poet said

Do we remember the deaths before death

The time when we lost what we thought we had

The child we could not be for long

The native city we had to walk away from

Though the past came running after us crying

As life moves from one death to another

The last one is like the ones that came before.

Cacophony

 The drunkard sleeping under

The tree he thinks he owns

Because he sleeps there

Protests the birdsong

That wakes him early

I have heard him quarrel

Before with his past

In a particular order

The wife he left because

She wanted money all the time

The friend who owes him 

And refuses to pay back

The enemy who thrashed him

When he was unprepared

And has it coming soon;

This is something new

Complaining of the clamour

From the newborn crow chicks

Impatient for their first feeding;

"Can't you let a poor man sleep

When he has to drink to do that

Do you know what the prices are

Am I stealing this stuff off the street

Like you do for building your nest

If you keep up this racket every morning

I am going to come for you with a gun."

I too talk to the crows when alone

Like a child confiding to his toys.

The tippler pours himself a hangover fix

Targets the original sinner again

And finally goes back like Caliban to his dream. 

First loss

This crow is flying about

With its own feather in its beak

Much like me holding on to my 

First milk tooth when it fell

And trying to put it back fearing

The ridicule of peers

I had seen being ridiculed;

It was a rite of passage

To cope with the first loss

To get it soon buried

In the backyard

Helped by mother

With a generous sprinkling of milk;

Mother has now become a framed photo

Quietly receiving her monthly oblations

So has father who consoled me

With the fact that teeth for grown-ups

Replace the ones we lose;

Every memory is a memory of loss

Of what we lost and what we have not.

Silence

Look at the silence

Of the sky

When it darkens

Before rain

Listen to night fall

Over the city

Fighting darkness

With its lights

How can we go home

If our work is not done

...

The parrot's feather,

I picked up on the terrace 

During my evening walk,

Was green and white with

Maybe a touch of blue

From affinity for the sky,

I kept it for a while in my hand

Wishing I could fly into the night

And be remembered as someone

Who vanished as he wished.

...

Silence is taught

In corporate ashrams

If it can be paid for

Sometimes with life

Someone's silence 

Can be bought

If cost is naught

What happened

To the silence

We fought in school

That we soon learnt to

Turn off and on

It is a deafening silence

When the falsehood is brazen

When the godman speaks

Truth falls silent.