Girl Clad in Red

There's something to be said, for a girl clad in red.

Suddenly my world full of pedestrian mire
My restless old soul full of uncertain ware
And hardened old pigments on palettes rather stale ---
All of them all - stand blemishless and free
And float through a world of violins and flute
For an orchard of symphony unheard.

And even though I lack a name, place or mail,
Still we are in for a long spell of thrill
As sure I'll have that same little chat
Daily as I wait for a busride at ten
With memories of moments that loop through my gaze
And kindle my dreams all aflame.

So even as I jostle with sweat, mud and grime
Her eyes look and smile and make my heart chime.

Final Testimony

Creaking panes now gather moss.

Outside, the shell now is torn to its ribs,

Opened to the battery of sunlight and hail.

Within, the plaster is loosened and falls,

Leaving my walls with melanomic skin,

Blotched with the cavities of mortars and bricks

Which shiver to its core, in the traffic rush of four,

Coughing as a consumptive could.

Groping my way through the cobwebs of halls,

I’m startled by voices of faces on walls

That long back had marched by my side.

But streets we had rumbled with such heady feet,

Now parcel our dreams to far other states,

Even beyond immigration desks.

Left with the sideshow of clowns among graves

We live out our days among logsheets of crime

In a land that is jammed in its wheels.

Should I have learnt that things would be thus?

Should I, after all the unlearnt lessons,

After so many blunders

Of so many proportions,

After all the aeons of promises forgot,

After so many, and so much more –

Should I have learnt longer back

To purge myself of hopeless hope

And drink the gall of hate and loss?

Yada Yada Hi Dharmasya

Glanirva Bhavathi Bharatha,

Abhyuthanam something something

Tadatmanam etc etc…

Questions whirl in vacant air

And leap and twirl and whisper by:

Was this the end for which we fought?

Ours was not a paltry lot.

Back in that midnighted tryst full of hope

We all did have far grander dreams.

I plod through the fields of ancestral bones,

And even as I wander among rubble smelling blood

I search for a light that shelters us all

From all those blasts that have bombed through my dreams

And charred into ashes with insatiate flame

Seeds of a time that unawakened lie.

Our hopes have bled for long –

What more from withered veins?

The courage of impossible hope,

The vision of life through undying dreams –

Still would I pray for these.

Suffer us not to stagnate and rot,

Even in these climes, these desert times

Amid the rocks and bones and dying grass.

I wish to believe to the last.

Riddle me the Shape

Startled by insistent footfalls on stairs,
I've shuffled in the unforeseen chambers of night
And jostled with the shadows unkempt.

Fretful and torn, with eyes never shut
I even have swayed to the entrancing calls
Of songs that'll float as whispers in winds
In nights without slightest of lights.

Wonder if these now'll merge to a face
That'll riddle me the shape of the other half of self
And conjoin my words to the running-mill of veins
Where pace has been paltry of late.

Grappling with strings within irresolute hands,
I've fumbled for long with our abdicated songs.

Wreathed by the foam spread on waves lapping weeds
I drown among dreams full of tulips in bloom.

Answerless Acts

Let there be no music the next time we meet.

I wouldn't want other notes to distract
The melodies of smile that light up my soul
In these our quarries of programmes and codes
Where horns and motors now reign.

Perhaps we should find a new ruin for a meet
And meditate on soft-blooming colours of clouds
That paint our skies with 'what could have been'
As both of us dig for relics to be culled
To fence our memories all tight.

We only have episodes of one-day-long tours
That linger with same set of questions unasked
And count through the pulses of answerless acts
That end up with stuttering farewells.

My fingers are tangled in time's clotted knots
Where stardust is turned into pebble-mired sand.

Warmed by the sunlight you wove through your hair,
I have longed for the music of seas.

But even as I rush towards waves rather late,
I'm left with the surfeit of bubbles instead.

Strictly for Men (well...not all)

With pears and peaches and melons thus stacked
With fair, cream and brown and such varied shades
How should I not be distracted and feel
As bees in an orchard in spring?

Unseen in crowds, my veins humming still
I steal a few glances and measure through my gaze
Shapes that'll birth my Madonna on tracks
In these our office-leaving times.

Count me not pervy and trust the dear chef
Who loves the new teasers with lipsmacking grace.

Unmet Seasons

Perhaps our loves have their settled times,
When seasons of hope and destiny can meet.

We only had walks and talks among trains
That whistled through the pages of academic lore
And tangled with newfangled theories and more
In nights that had bustled with Eliot and Poe
Or poured over Rushdie and Ghosh.

At most we had shared some moonlit new songs
Or wondered at statues of immaculate grace
Just before crossing the road, clutching hands,
For a dinner of biriyani unmatched.

Gallantly we moved and breathed to the leaves
Chapters now lost of unspoken words
In lanes that are dotted with history's footnotes
With songs from our memory's springwell.

No one now croons along these quiet lanes
With melodies of Mirza in lips.

Shorn of all tendrils or blossoms I bide
And wait for the tide of memories withheld
That spring to my nights with joy now and then
And promise me a surge to time's missing shores.

Battling with waves I steer my ship straight
Till seasons of hope and destiny can meet.

From the Kingdom of Bhutan

Time rather crawls among these quiet hills.

Perhaps when he strolled along harvested fields
He was struck by the majesty of green rising peaks
That mock our flux with most ancient calm
And lost track of ways he had mapped.

Or perhaps gazing on snow-mountain caps
That hung atop valleys as wizened old sages
He had puzzled himself with their foreign lore
And therein was caught again late.

It even could have been the full blooming rose,
Or many other petals of captivating colours
That brighten these greens with fragrance and charm
And halt a man sharp in his tracks.

Even at night, when in cold-chilling dark
The wonders of day are quietly asleep,
The twinkles of lights from faraway folds
Meshed with the fabric of star-sprinkled sky
Arrest our gaze as magnets on top
And stall our progress too long.

Or may be just brushed by the buffets of wind
He stood with his curls or tall-tousled hair
And breathed in the whispers of God.

Time rather crawls among these quiet hills,
Here in the land of Buddha and his peace.