Cumulus

During the rain break

I hear the infant

Next door speak 

The language of cats

I have not seen its face

Do not know if it's a boy or girl

The city hides its newborns

As if Kamsans are after them

Between chores I come to the window

To see if the drizzle has started again

A cloud the colour of snow

Rears up like a polar bear

Catches the sun on its head

Turns dazzling white like in an ad

To be old is to befriend the nonverbal

The cumulus, the petrichor and downpour 

Even the silent deity that speaks in dreams.

Movement

The stars are moving away

From the moving clouds,

All movement mesmerises

Stillness too if it is the sky

Or mind when no thought arises,

The stork is a study as it awaits

The chosen fish at its feet

Movement could be death

Stillness could be death too

When the predator is too close,

Time is predator and prey

Movement is distance, is time

How far is the same as how long

We find ourselves in the same place

Did we move at all or come full circle?

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.

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 was 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 ----

Minions fight to sing the praises of the puppet

And ask why he cannot be the new redeemer.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Love in the sky

The air force planes rehearsing

For the coming parade, break

All civilian decibel limits,

Across  the sky copters draw the hearteen

Expressing their love for the nation

Finding new limits of the constitution,

One recalls the air raid sirens heard

In the clips from the West Asian wars

It wouldn't be fun to be at the receiving end

Of bombs, shells, missiles raining on us

Not to be a spectator sitting with a plate of cookies

But to be part of the chilling TV spectacles

Watching dream houses crashing, newborns

Blinded, maimed, killed, or worse orphaned

Would we cheer bombers heading out on missions

If we could see the targets as flesh and blood?

Moonlight

With each remembering, the past

Appears better than it was last time,

The distance of time makes it less bitter,

It is easier to forgive those who found

Pleasure in the pain they caused others,

With each remembering, the past

Seems something that happened

To someone else somewhere, not to us,

Like when we hear someone on the bus

Talking about their travails all these years,

Now that it's all over, let's not carry it over,

Remember not to resent, remember to forgive,

Do not forget the moonlight on the lake

The distant hillock shaped like an elephant

The half-heard song the breeze keeps alive.

Fragrances

Some fragrances are never forgotten

The smell of coffee in the morning

Even after you have stopped taking it

That of cigarettes you no more smoke

The odour of matchsticks you still like

When you light them for igniting the stove

The lungs don't find the incense agreeable 

The flowers for the framed favourite gods

Dare not evoke memories of the sensual

Though the metaphysical and saint-poets

Thought they were brides of the worshipped

If only you could have a whiff of the divine.