festive

A ball of pain sits
knotted up
at the base of your throat
unmoved by all that
coughing and wheezing,
as desperate as futile.

in the goodness of their heart
they recommend doctors and meds
(not knowing where it comes from).

To their credit, yes, it is probably
the winters.
The season when all your losses
well up in your eyes and
nestle in the pit of your stomach,
wrestle with half-forgotten memories
that leave you shivering
in the middle of the night
under layers of the kind of warmth
solitude can muster.
The bitterness of coffee fails
to sweeten the resident taste
of self pity.

It is that time of the year
when the festive spirit finds you
seeking empty houses
that were home once.
The carols of silence echo
across the halls of your heart
and a room of one's own
seems more spacious
than you would have liked.

this is us part2

You send me poems with flavoured laughter,
and i long for autumn shadows where poetry
is more than graffiti on social media walls,
where its ferocity colours me faster than i can
name the hues, more vibrant than my vocabulary.

I sit down to write you a letter, the envelope ready,
To contain the breathlessness that needs must be
(Like those long nights blanketing our winter reverie)
trapping it in salival good old days-ery. but i get lost
in the history of the stain on my notepad, and the
feeling of home that is my fountain pen. By the time
i decide to forego salutations, always so formal, always
so empty, another sunrise taps at my window. i watch
distilled rays fall on the sheet, hitherto blank. Ink leaks.

when you get the post, would you know that i sent you
the best of me - a drop of sunshine, a smudge of home.
Will you hold it against me that my new poem is an ode
to silence, whose words have dug six feet trenches in my
heart, and found something there. i know that. for after all
these years, there is a new pattern in the way it beats.

Would you notice the stamp of a nonexistent post office,
in a country farther away than you are in my dreams.
I haven’t given a return address this time, though we
are closer than this skin to flesh, and maybe i will smell
the decay of poems that languish in your notes and spill over
into unsent letters,lying in the corner drawer of the guestroom.
Perhaps the pattern will change again. The heart will beat,
beat down on words, whose ghosts will find succour in frail
memories of you, going frailer by the season, and the blot
on my notepad will grow bigger, darker, murkier.

Then again, perhaps none of this will be our fate. And
the exotic essences of your delicious verses will settle
At the base of my tongue, and keep bringing me back
From the obstinacy of my frosty solitude. Inkless.
May your will be stronger than my fear. Amen.

about us

they leave it all behind.
your words,my scars,
(and the other way)
your hopes,my failures
(these remain exclusive)

My forgetfulness is only
the overwhelming memory
of all thats lost without ever
having been played.

it will not be long before
this house becomes dust
not long after we retreat
into impossible silences
and the whispers i hear
from across the walls
will be buried in textures
of pain and acrylic.

But when they write us
in their version, we will
be the stuff of happiness,
not perfection, but delusion
nevertheless.all that they
leave out, all the rest, that
is where you and i will lie
in the glistening truth of
anonymous resentment.

a place for silence

i know where this silence turns
for solace and even respite. To
conversations with those
who are not yet our friends
(who may never be)
and for that we shall always
owe them. sometimes one
needs that stranger, to play
a walk on part, not ask too
many questions, keep us in fear
of our reputations, or other
insecurities, that we admit
with surprising nonchalance
to be tastelessly clichéd.

Friends tend to understand.
And sometimes, thats exactly
what we dont need. Let there
be distance, judgment, roleplay,
illusion, and the magic of deep
shallows possible only in a non-friend.
here is to you, then. may there be words.
And may silences bury themselves
between the lines. For nobody to read.

secret santa

how does your silence find me
every time? it is precise and cold.
across summer evenings and winter
solstices. Nestled in what they call
the 'janus-faced hour'. When my laugh
pierces the entrails of a dull night sky
and leaves it grappling with glossy
smithereens of desire many light years
away, there you are,as sure as the north
star, my own Santa, always ready with
your gift of quiet. Its always christmas
with you, and i sit stoking embers of
unlit fires in non existent chimneys,
hanging an old sock that mother knit
before i was born, whose pair has been
long lost in the forest of carelessness
that life has somehow made it through.
sleeping dogs and snoring watchmen fade.
There is no snow. No reassuring breeze or
the pitter-patter of rain that songs are made of.

tight lipped nights burn into overcast mornings
heavy with the festive spirit of solitude.

festival of calm

you haven't written in a while.
and today as i look out the window
at a world lit with the glittering hopes
that festivals tend to string along,
i wonder about the darkness that
has left you in unbreachable silence.
you are that one house on this street
with no string lights, diyas or rangolis.
passersby would presume the owners
are away. Meeting and greeting. but
If they wait and watch long enough
They might catch an unsure shadow.

I have left a candle at the gate, and a text
on your phone.(it hasnt got delivered yet).
now i will wait for the firecrackers
to diffuse this quiet, that is far from calm.

the genealogy of a poem

There were days when a poem was needed
More than any other need, even breath
Or breath only enough for a poem.
Sore and bleeding from all the
Scratching, the skin felt rough
and cagey. But the hands kept itching.
Layers of skin peeled off
But no poem flowed.

Meanwhile,
The mind rattled in its empty spaces
(where words used to be)
with the sight of malice and entitlement
in a twelve year old who goaded her brother
to kick a younger child for daring to aspire
to the rich man's playground.

Ears burst with lingering voices of desperate men
telling stories of hope and "tempered grace",
only to be found hanging from their bedroom
ceilings when they were left to themselves.

Over time, you have accumulated pity
Where once there were poems
Guilt edged love out,
And the fear of loneliness wrestles
with the comfort of it all as daily recreation.
Forgetting and remembering
in turns and at the same time,
what you have become,
You hope words can fix this.
that time can repair what you
Have wrought upon your dreams.

But what pain deserves a poem
And what poem deserves this pain

There were days that you needed a poem.
And there were nights when a poem needed you.
But all you had at the end of the day was a requiem
for an unwritten poem.
And there were mornings you woke up to
the smell of smoke that reminded you
of the electric crematorium
(Though there isn't one for many miles out.)

flight of freedom #4

What rages within you
could have been love
had I not reached in and
discovered Russian winter.
(Who am I to complain –
vapours of liquid nitrogen
cover my own frostbitten heart.)

How far have we travelled.
To now find ourselves out
of our depths, without sight,
hope, or sensation. Frozen.

May the warmth of un-expectation
thaw out the blaze that engulfs us.

Until spring then, Godspeed, my friend.

flight of freedom #3

The furious shadows of fire, or perhaps the
fires of known and unknown shadows, will
burn down illusions of freedom, as much
as its burden; but, painted in melted wax,
when we plunge into the ocean,those flames
and those shadows will meet a watery grave,
and the sun, in anticipation of its own twilight,
would not be able to help that sinking feeling.

As for us, we will float in untapped memories
of corals, and find ourselves sleeping in oysters.

flight of freedom #2

These wings were never meant to fly
Straight to you in raging fits of passion.

Nor to be plucked out in forlorn despair
In fear of time’s machinations, or love’s.

These wings were not accessories
(Not a gift of red bull, or whatever else)

They were not of the world of butterflies
Adorning gardens of luscious spring.

They were not shards of unsteady moons
To be put together in dreams and diaries.

These wings were not delicate chains, nor
awkward gifts of unwanted memories.

These wings were my rebellion.
And Icarus had the right idea.

flight of freedom #1

I shed the last vestiges of my past
today. I plucked each memory out.
it was slow and painstaking. They
had said, it was important, even
necessary, to move forward. I look
different now. Not better or worse.
Different, now that my wings are gone.

In the distance, I can see someone
picking up feathers of unknown hues.
with an unbecoming delight.

My past will sit in a small brown vase
In the intimacy of books and unwept
tears. Meanwhile, I shall spend myself
staring at an unchallenged sky.

Freedom, it turns out, is only about
choosing the chains, and timelessness
binds us just as well as its counterpart.

hide and seek

4:47 am
You sounded rather calm
when you got the call
(and i have seen you surprised
at every mundane sunrise)
Your monosyllabic response
was matter of fact in acceptance.
Sober you couldn't manage hysterics
even when the occasion demanded it.
As if it wasn't the news of my hanging
you were being informed about.
You kept the receiver back on its base,
and went back to sleep.

They would have found a note
If they had checked your messages.
But your phone had been dead
longer than me.

2:42am
"Would you look for me?
Where would you begin?
lost to time, will the words
of a younger me blaze a trail,
or will the breadcrumbs of older
silences lead you astray?

would you dare put your hand
in the hornet's nest of my mind
(that could not sort through its
own memories) to pull out a
forgotten hope of meaning?

could death be one more night in
a tangled mass of festive string lights
that cannot be unknotted?"

They would have found your reply
in your message drafts folder.

2:51am
"Where do i begin?
At the lingering inadequacy of every day,
or the disappointment that weighs heavy
on the laughter we still share,
the anger from this pretence of sanity
or perhaps the sheer exhaustion of having
nothing to say. But we will be free soon.
And in time i will find you.
Like i always have."

But they never cracked the security code.
And you never woke up.

some of us

Some of us live life like we drive.
Eyes on the road ahead. Meeting
potholes we swerve to evade.as cars
chase neglected side view mirrors.And
we drown out their garish frustrations
with pink floyd.comfortably numb (but
for that speed bump we almost did expect!)

Some of us walk, like we live. Straight
into intricate cobwebs woven lovingly
across branches hung low, unsure of the
fragrances of the old woman's backyard,
certain only of the words we have read
as our unsynchronized feet tread on
trampled leaves of yesterday's bloom.

Some of us sit down to our third round
of dinner, way past midnight, tuned in
to a graduation speech about 'keeping the
hunger alive!' (Burp!) Did they mean this?
It would be refreshing.After all the platitudes
that make us reach for crusty old ice cream for
the uneasy oil floating along the food pipe.

Some of us go silent. And listen only to the
music of dead people who should have known
better. We wonder what it takes to walk into an
open manhole, drive past the railing off a freeway,
have a bowl of unnamed white pills for the next meal.
Hope could lie in an accident waiting to happen,
for some of us. Fear could be the only consolation,
for some of us.For some of us, it will never be okay.
and for some of us, that is quite okay.

slippery slopes

Sometimes stubbornness is merely
helplessness,struggling for meaning
in escape. Silence often gushes out
of eddying thoughts, and you remain
unsure whether the minty unease at the
base of your throat is acidity or words.

you go back to the music of a man
who hung himself on your best friend’s
birthday, and didn’t find you worthy of a
‘why’, after all this time (if indeed a linear
measure can fit).

                           sometimes,you wake up
to the noose. 

                         and the lingering scent of
insect repellent fills your nostrils reminding
you of the night before. when you played god
to a wasp that failed, or perhaps refused
to comprehend the purpose of a door.
Where is Disney when you need it? In their
romantic hands, this could have been a
heroically yellowed flight for self affirmation.
Definitely a musical. 

                               But as it turned out, the
inglorious end was mopped up under the
darkness of a monsoonal moon, even as
unsteady hands slipped into sanitized
narratives of sufficient guilt and numbness
on loan.perhaps that is how it all winds up.

And the sharp edges of borrowed pain will
take you through one.more.night. morning
will bring mother’s disapproval of kohl stained
pillow covers.that saw more than they reveal.

different strokes

sketch me one of those easy afternoons
-a charcoal sketch- of old friends sitting
together on a day that has not yet met its
expiry date, a time before companionship
became subject to first come first serve rules,
across a makeshift table with chairs dragged,
borrowed and stolen from other clusters
when they weren't watching, having
unassuming conversations over expensive
lunches nobody really paid for, laughing at the
stroke of two when the pull of rajma chawal
was greater than mandated duties, perpetually
planning escapades born of quixotic ambition.
beyond the borders of the canvas sit strangers
eyeing wistfully a camaraderie that is theirs
in some other sketch of some other memory.

Paint me a barmy evening with watercolors
- running into monsoonal excesses- of a walk
through potholed paths and shrill cries for
attention from cars and bikes while cyclists fall
off the edges of a world, theirs only in its periphery.
A piece of discarded blade reaching through worn-out
kolhapuri chappals bleeds alta on the road home
across alleys embellished with trampled flowers
and dog poop.The white churidar stains a muddy red
in response to questions the empty house never asks.

Write me a poem of a reluctant night heavy with
the aching humidity of accumulated pain,
blanketing embittered dead stars in a cityscape
of loss made of concrete, longing for a respite
that is possible only among mountains, rivers and
crickets, where in the breeze that becomes breath,
the space for the 'I' is undone.Write me a(n) un-i-verse.

mirasmus

When did you last let yourself go
on a wooden swing whose creaks
have coloured memories older than
you, reminding you unwittingly of
the things you used to fear. height
wasn't one of them.back then.now,
so many things are so different.
age creeping into your knees.metabolism.
the scramble for company.ear wax.
glass shards in your eye.sudden noises.
Fashion sense.unborn daughters.

swinging to these rhythms of change
life catches up with you in the name
of the holy spirit,the watchman
telling you of the curfew on swings
in this community park, free for all.
Not after 11 pm. (children get
preference all day, giving you a window
too tiny to climb into and make it.)
Reflection is not suited to LED lit AC
rooms, you want to tell him. That the arc
of oscillation is ready to reveal a potential
secret and you are fated to receive it, here.
now. But the haggard man in uniform
helpless to follow administration's orders
expects compliance.and pity, not sure for whom.

The open doors of your house greet you
with a warm stench of something rotten and
the irremediable hope of pushing your fears to
the pit of your stomach with the force of old
over watched sitcoms, where they will lie until
5 am dreams regurgitate them, leaving you
wakefully suspended in mirasmus.
the prisoner of a war of your own making.

mirror mirror

Every morning, you stand before the mirror.
You look at your face, but never closely.
there are things for dryness (your nose tends
to break out into little white flakes, Dead skin),
things to smoothen and hide 'beauty spots',
You recently bought something for the little bags
collecting darkness under your eyes, harvesting a
fatigued view of this world.
the liner keeps you from unwanted questions,
the new kohl pencil justifies a watering that
just cannot seem to catch a break. Salty.
the lips are allowed paleness. sometimes their
fruity flavours help change the now homely
metallic taste in the mouth. From too much coffee,
or a long pending root canal, or certain kinds of days.

in the day, you can hide inside a mirror.
it gives you an outside face you can carry
around for the world. But as night falls,
the mask melts, wears off. Even for the
bipolar mirror. Embittered by its own
hypocrisy, it will force you to come closer.
to look at yourself.shorn of comforting narratives.
and when silver truth peers at you,
sleepless nights are a foregone conclusion.

mornings must find you once again
before hallucinogenic mirrors
glossing over your losses,
making up for things that can never
in truth be made up.

Of God and Grammar

This is a poem (to use the word loosely,
as it is in the nature of words to be used) 

about a God I don't know
but whose name I capitalise
i am not sure what kind of noun
God is. Proper and yet common.
Collective. Mostly abstract.
The pronouns are as confused. He.
She. It. Singular. Plural.
Adjectives have varied over time
and circumstances. Benevolent. Wrathful.
but always Just.
Articles have caused other kinds of conflict
- a god or the?
Middle school language classrooms rarely
address God's grammatical inconsistencies.
Wren & Martin may give you platitudes.
Much later, surrounded by fire and blood and
limbs and fear, you will question them.
Wren, Martin and their platitudes.
Middle age will calm your nerves,
acceptance and cynicism will leave space
for neither God nor Grammar.
God tends to be rediscovered in old age.
When language fades,
you find yourself clinging to the idea of God.
You are told, and you believe that God is the
grammar of life, understanding, perception.
or maybe that of chaos, who is to say.

meanwhile in a Middle school language class,
the teacher is telling her bewildered kids
for the nth time that Grammar is God.

loneliness

Loneliness is socially awkward.
Even among its own.
when two or more lonelinesses meet
(often in a nightly spell)
they deepen and darken one another
without a hint of malice though.
There is the barest acknowledgment
of an absence of light,common to all.
a necessarily uncomfortable quiet.
There is no scratching of surfaces,
corrugated as they are, nor softening
of edges. they become whetstones,
sharpening themselves on each other,
ready to stab their renewed selves back
into restful hearts hopeful of
dawn's companionship.

sometimes though,
a loneliness tests its limits,
questions itself without fear,
or pity, or affectation. Not even
love.unfazed it fades.an implosion
swallowed by watchful but silent
skies. As dawn breaks, a restless
heart wakes up to a poem.

a letter

I want to write
I want to write a letter
I want to write you a letter
I want to write you a letter so
I can tell you how much i miss you.
A phone call could do that.
And if i wait.just a little bit longer
and let it fester, then allmymissing
can become a poem. But that would depend.
on whether i dust the memories everyday
or let time accumulate over it. Either way,
there is no guarantee. Of remembering you.
or finding that poem.
a letter seems practical.and romantic.
though ours is the romance of
dry rivers and empty skies.

But then the letter would stir up expectations.
A poem can be content in its disappointments.
given the rich harvests of our lonelinesses,
the latter seems better suited to us.

What would you like -
Should i pander to your fancies?
We were strangely one in our
whimsicalities, come to think of it.
(Everything else clashed.)
You would find the idea
of recording absences ridiculous.
i wish i could disagree.
What about this conversation then?
That was us too. All of our time
a contemplation of fashionable trivialities
(in distinct idioms of silence,
less definite when we are apart and
time lags into a language of longing
necessitating this interlude.)

Let us go then.
As it turns out, true to our natures,
we are too passé for a letter.
too impatient for a poem.
It will be a note. A story without words.
An asoka leaf. buried in the heaviest book
on the topmost shelf of the public library
that we used to visit.

camping

You speak of things that I
can hardly put together in
the contours of my mind
as we build a camp in this
fertile delta formed from our
disparate consciousnesses
that needs must be but streams
pouring out into one sea.
We will get there. I know.

Meanwhile, tell me, where do you
find images of pianos and silences
cohabiting as if meant to be?

How are monsoonal mangoes
your friends on lonely evenings
covered in blankets of snow?

Who whips up dreams in the
middle of scorching afternoons
of back breaking work, ours not
the world of siestas.

Why can I not reach you except
in your words and even then
only through the prisms of
my paltry understanding?

What chasms lie between the
many yous, invisible in your own
stories, peeping through curtains
of deliciously desolate pasts, squatting
in narrow alleys of squalid presents,
wincing at impossible futures where
you lose your balance, and fall into
my pedestrian imagination for an
unlikely fairy tale.

I wonder. in the uncertain refuge of
this camp.where much is displaced.
But for now. Let it be,
your words and me.

insomnia

What keeps you up at night?

Sometime a little before midnight
usually within the hour when
all is quiet and the window streams in
a 90s movies honeymoon crimson,
you wonder.

how is death recorded
in the registers of the mind
(or love, even life for that matter)
where memory and imagination
fraternise, get entangled, lose themselves
in fluid boundaries that
your sense of self is made of,
create un-create re-create
a version, a reality (the reality?)
that can find no validation
outside of itself.

Mornings will bring squirrels
and mynahs and the comfort of
attested narratives.
in the familiar lull of insta lives,
metallic rages, unremembered promises,
moral subjectivities and other day noises,
you can rest and sleep until dusk
nudges you to expected wakefulness
and thoughts of certain uncertainties.

sleep

How do you read
the body in shadows
(beset by suspicions of
depth perceptions being but
desultory illusions)?

the head tilts, limbs move
and figures grow and shrink
like your sense of effacing time
fill you with fear as much as delight,
like the taste of your memories.

but thats not right.
no.take the strings away
from your mind's manacled clasp,
and focus on the body.
follow each movement. closely.
and let the universe
in all its big bang-ness
bring you to this.
moment.place.
(if they are indeed separate.)
a stage of lights where

caliginous lives play out
to the music of atoms
once suspended in mandated
orbital loops of order and
now crashing into one another.

don't get distracted.
watch the body.read the shadow.
read the body.watch the shadow.
see if you can weigh in
on the 21 grams.

confessions

I.
I miss you, Ma.
It is nice here, and if I am being recorded
As I often am,
I will exhaust my limited vocabulary
In describing this as the best time ever.
My quieter moments, when i miss you the most,
are not captured, especially the nights.
But the yoga, the swimming, the posing.
The laughter, the lies, the tomfoolery are there.
I don’t know if you know, but
I do that for you.
I know you will smile when you watch it.
And father too. I miss him.
Not in the same way.
But we are family.

II.
I miss you, Ma.
I am filled with a trepidation
Very different from my fear of the dark
When you say you want to be a star.
Stars are so far. And dim.
The other day, they were watching
a movie about two kids whose
Mom and dad had become stars.
I asked them how that had happened.
They did not know.
I find I cannot sing ‘twinkle twinkle little star’
Without crying now.
(it is small mercy that I have outgrown it)
I don’t want you to become a star, Ma.
Because we are family.

III.
I miss you, Ma.

IV.
I miss you, Ma.
I see you singing along with Mehndi 

Hasan playing on your phone,
deeply lost in the world of whatsapp.
keeping the house together
the way only you can.
Dad was right last night.
Have you noticed though
You are kinder to me now?
As if something has changed.
it is in the crevices of these little
changes that fear has made a home.
To miss you is to miss the comforting
recklessness of taking you for granted.
After all, we are family.

V.
I miss you, Ma.
I smile, laugh, work,
sleep, and live out life in all its
glorious routine, but You
are not here. And i still am.
It is like i must unlearn
My visceral response to life, and
Find another formula.
It cannot be bought off the shelf.
Though well meaning friends have tried.
I will be fine, you had said and that teenage
rebellion is long gone to do otherwise.
Father daydreams more now, but don’t worry,
I am around for the reality checks.
Broken, but still we are family.

farewell

sixteen years
feel like yesterday.
ingratitude digs its heels deeper
as you walk to the receiver’s end
where old and new tastes
come together inorganically.

An orange ice candy
from days of yore melts
and drips down your hand,
onto your shirt
(of course it had to be white)
you should run to wash it,
you should.but you will not.
now the stain will stay
like certain other things in life
you should have scrubbed.rinsed.
been more careful about.

A playlist of songs jams
in your ears
traceable through years
and people (who may or
may not themselves be)

Neruda was a late discovery
but so apt at this moment.
(Borges though remains
the flavor of the week)

a strange neon memory
of pizzas, laughter and
awkward silences rushes in,
cold-shoulders you, dashes out,
and leaves you to wonder -
was it really from the library of
your own mind, rich in its
devastation?

The past crackles and wheezes,
fitfully overflows
with real and imagined slights
with sleights of hand
and heart
reaching out. delving in.
slipping through
the cracks that hold you together.
and letting go seems to be
the only way of holding on.

evenings like these are perfect
for ill timed but necessary goodbyes.

ghost towns

There is music. And noise.
Laughter. Stop.
Flash a smile.
Fall.silent. Speak up.
Crash. Arise, awake. Curl into a foetal position.
Think of mother.her love.amniotic fluid when life was about floating in safe spaces.

Your name.they keep calling you by your name.
And your impulse is to turn around to see who they are talking to. 
You have trained yourself to not make it obvious. And They never really figure 
what takes you that minute to respond.
How have you not warmed up to it.
It has been years. And yet you cringe.
And revaluate friendships that involve addressing you by that name
Asking you what you would like for dinner.
Sitting under Warm yellow bulbs.unsuited to edm.and conversation.and company.
Warm yellow bulbs.muffled in an order imposed.
Let there be light.and may darkness lunge at it.and emerge the victor.
For once. The underdog may never win. In fancy places with mirrors.
Where reading off menus makes up for things you cannot put a finger on. Coldplay cannot fix this.
Language and mosaic walls and reflections of apologies sought and given and the fragility of titanium 
and ice princesses and butterflies and wheels and children of the gods and..
grammar nazis (the only acceptable kinds in certain circles) will tell you about 'run on lines'. 
As if life can be short and crisp like they want from this sentence.
or.perhaps if only. Who is to say.
it is time to settle the bill. Pay up. Your share.
(Meanwhile outside the window,
Marks & Spencer says - "Life. Spend it well.")
And the last of us will step out of this ghost town with its glistening yellow lights and empty tables.
There is music and noise. Laughter.
Stop.

the architect

So, what is your talent?
They ask you.
You were warned against immodesty.
Result: A second long hesitation.
World’s shortest sparring match
ends with candour beating discretion
“I am an expert architect”.
They exchange glances.

“But I must admit
I build only for myself.”
They frown.
Peddlers of hope, vanguards of meaning
tend to be wary of narcissism.
And yet these peddlers of hope and
vanguards of meaning are also heroes
of a perpetual ethical, existential Baywatch.
Instinctively, they swoop in to rescue you,
throwing your way a potentially lifesaving buoy
to tow you to safe shores -
Interesting. What have you built so far?
What is your speciality?
You smile, despite yourself.
at the incorrigibility of both parties.
“My speciality?
Prisons.”

Someone somewhere dabs
as you step out
with a new building plan
clear in your head.

smile

The front page of the newspaper
reserved usually for the
worst news of the day
accompanied by a tediously ghastly
image of death
takes a break today.
Instead an ad proclaims
in font bold and glossy paper -
A smile is your best friend.
Its free.
(Not the toothpaste though
that apparently guarantees
a shining spectacle)
There is a lot of literature
out there that exalts the smile.

Recently lived experience tells you
it is the answer you have been looking for.
In defiance of years of research.
And a seeming mastery of words.
This is what it has come to.
A simple smile.

Not the one you imagine
on your mind's face
that moves no facial muscle.
This curve has got to be tangible.
All of the world's demands,
that hold your person to ransom,
met by this rather wieldy contrivance.
It doesn't have to mean anything.
Just flash a measured beam
Nothing too drastic
(showing of teeth is permissible
but avoidable post lunch)
and everyone is on their way.
Without the awkwardness of words
you have told them what they want
to hear. you may not know it
yourself (but that's okay)

Nobody asks you why you are smiling.
It is a language unto itself
that delights in appearance
and seeks no further.
Smooth as ice. But warm.
melting on the outside.
The polar ice caps at
the centre of your heart
remain untouched. as they should.
and you can go on
churning in a silence
that admits no camaraderie
save that of its own solitude.

Meanwhile, outside the clinic
the dentist's SOP reads -
"My mission is to spread smiles."
A brief thawing.
An interminable frost.
You smile.
And walk away.

the anatomy of pain

What do you fight pain with?
The laughter of a ten year old.
What if her head is shaved, and
there is a cannula permanently lodged in her arm?

Find another child. or
Look the other way, at the stained wall.
Apathy might yet be the good fight.
if you feel like it, throw in a prayer.
but be careful what you wish for.
Concerned but not involved is a good plan too.

Some people including your favourite doctor
Choose pills. Neat.
But that changes the battleground.

Solace has been known
To be found in comparison.
'It could have been worse' has
assuaged many a curse.
freud might be brought up here.
So could schadenfreude.

Drudges swear by their mantra -
'May every waking hour be a working one.'
No time for pain, no need for a fight.
That could 'work', who knows.

Meanwhile, the little girl
hugs her mother with a bruised arm
and on her way out, smiles at you.
right there, that moment tells you
all you really need to know -

Don’t fight pain. It is the last bastion
of the civilized.

Outside the window,
A man is kicking a dog.
Machines are honking at one another.
Three boys are sitting ‘together’
texting each other lewd things
and sharing guffawing emojis.

Your facebook feed brings up Gibran
on this world poetry day -
“Your pain is the breaking of the shell
that encloses your understanding.”

condolence

i will remember you

forever more

in the lingering incense

of charred roses.

the body is smoke

and flies with vultures

(the spirit always soars higher

with the eagles)

they used to say

you were ungraspable.

i can hold you now

in a small brass receptacle.

i think everyone agrees

ashen is not your colour.

especially when semal and jasmine

line the street i carry you across

to what was once home.

it is the onset of spring.

and i sit here mourning 

this autumnal shedding

wondering where the fallen leaves go

and how the branches hold back their instinct

to reach down and bring them back

into their fold.

does the tree know its loss?

should i shake it out of its reverie

urging it to look down

at what was once its own?

does it need consolation

knowing what is gone?

where are its copious tears,

the swollen eyes

red and numb?

in the silence that comes

of unasked questions

i find myself

sitting with you firmly

in hands that have not stopped shaking

under a tree that has no shade to offer.

it looks at me

with a warmth that reminds me of you

and asks, without malice

- 'what kind of loss have you known?

'cultures of protest'

so you detest
and choose to infest
certain cultures of protest.

I am painting my body
The shade of your ire
The bruises you gifted
Spell freedom in dull black and blue.
i doubt you can read it
But can you feel it throb-
a determined pulse in fiery red
that writhes resolves and revolts?

your fingers still clasp my arm
where i have Angelou tattooed-
'Still i Rise'.
Do you know her?
classrooms and libraries
seminar halls echo with the voice
of that phenomenal woman;
all you hear is someone's mann ki baat.
But can you see me rise and
walk up to you unafraid of the mob
you always seem to need with you?

I heard you on tv today-
What makes you so angry?
(I read somewhere anger stems
from low self worth)
There is also a saying.about empty vessels.
What are the chances you would have heard it.
But can you hear the voices
(of those who teach right from wrong)
dignified in their words
as much as silences
telling you your time is up?

Wake up. Smell the coffee.
We can organise tea if you so prefer.
Come sit across the table.

(Though your lathis and bricks tell me
that the room for discussion
has been demolished,)

Leave your saffron clout and un-reason
at the door. Bring your reasons.
Lets talk.

For otherwise
You are nothing more than
incoherent ramblings of fear
and insecurity seeking an ego trip.
Sorry.your flight has been cancelled.
Here take this shred of decency.
(it lay unclaimed outside college.
Must belong to one of yours.)
And walk away.

Too much to ask?

P.S. - Be afraid. Be very afraid-
You say.
Right back at you.

happy new year

The oranges disappeared
in the famished rush of midnight.
the fragrance of their
flowery rind remains.
takes you back to warm afternoons
many winters ago, the picture of
a sweater knitting mother
sitting on the terrace
checking lengths of arms
and torsos every so often,
as you munched on peanuts
carefully mined from stubborn shells
that rose into quaint mountains
by the side of the bedspread
and indulged in the comfort
of bountiful laps filled with dreams.

A sneeze unexpectedly
breaks the reverie
and pushes a new agenda –
that picture - did that happen
or have we invented more pasts
for ourselves
than our journals and monochromatic
kodak pictures contained?

Soft snores from another room
separated by a wall blue as our nostalgia
declare that this would be
one more night of
uncertain memories of definite things
that the morning will shrug off its shoulders
like we dismiss deaths
in faraway cities tucked in
other continents.
distance can confound
your sense of reality
lulling you into the consequentaility
only of the immediate.

Meanwhile
citrus is the flavor of this last day of the year.
in its lingering zest,
the new year promises
many more scented yesterdays
that may or may not have happened.