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.