Evening

If you have lived
In a place for long
And wait for your daily bus
At a particular stop
Sometimes you don't know
If it is yesterday or today
Especially if you are setting out
When the birds are coming home
It is as if you are caught
Between day and night,
You try to remember
What number you took the previous evening
Whether you switched routes
Got down at the signal
Walked to work
What time you logged out
Trying to find certainty
In what you've done
Then think the better of it,
What is there to recall in routine
When one day is just like another?
Out of sheer habit
You look over your left shoulder
At the ageless mango tree
Beautifully silhoutted
Behind the hardwares shop
And watch almost with an ache
A weary crow land on a darkening branch.

Time

It never gets done
When you think it's done
Dawns come too fast
Tumbling over one another
Like children.
Before the dreams arrive
The alarm goes off
Like a wakeful child
Wanting company.
The broom seems
To have hardly left your hand
When you picked it up
So many years ago
To help your mother.
How nice it would be
To sweep time away
Like this
And draw a new kolam
After your heart.

Mullai

I must be carrying in me the silence
Of the forests
My forefathers have lived off
Tended their cattle by
Keeping an eye out
For the striped man-eater
Too old or injured to hunt its natural prey.
I must have a memory somewhere
Of the fragrance of flowers
No hand has plucked
No woman has worn
No deity has been offered
I must know the calls of strange animals
And songs of birds no more seen
And may even have died.
I may have once sat entranced
Under a tree
Listening to the flute
That only a god could have played.

Success

When your child triumphantly says
She has secured the 34th rank
In a class of 35
She doesn't know that
Sometimes more is less
And she shouldn't feel sorry
For her friend
Who has got only the first rank.
Soon she is taught that her best friend
Is her arch rival and she must catch up with her
That only podium finishes matter
That to be 'also ran'
Is something shameful
That the 'joy of participation'
Is a loser's line
That to fail is to lose
The love of those you love
And make them cry
Like you have died.

Ghosts

The dead flit in and out
Of our daily lives
They follow us
Live with us
Years after, generations together
Evoking memories
In the shape of a nose
In a gait, posture or colour of eyes
Some still blessed for the riches shared
Many hated for their foibles
Travelling with the genes
Things you cannot break off
Some cursed again and again
With eternal damnation
By the heirs
For the diseases bequeathed
For their implacable hatred
That has driven progeny
To distant climes
Where they still live
Like ghosts
In shimmering limbos

The window

At the time
When girls were
Not allowed to be seen
Confined to the kitchen
And the backyard
Till they were married off
They saw the world
Only through the window
They lived in the dark
Moved in the shadows
If they had to come to the front door
They had to switch off the lights
Many hardly went out
Did not know
What it looked like
Beyond their street
Where the railway station was
What a train looked like
What it ran on
Where it went
They only knew that
It travelled
Long distances
Visited new places
And envied it for that.

Predictions

Mary came to me
Before any class exam
Pleading that I choose
The chapters she must study,
She had immense faith
In my divining abilities.
"Your tongue is full of black dots
Such people have mystic powers!"
I couldn't disabuse her of her superstition
As luck would have it
I had picked out the right lessons
The first time
Making her my ardent devotee.
She was very deferential to me
Afraid I would curse her,
Like those ancient rishis
Quick to take offence
And swift on the draw.
I never did that
I played the angel
We had read of,
Forever granting boons
Wishing people well
Saying nice things
And watching their faces bloom
Invoking a shower of petals
And starting
An infection of smiles.