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?