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.

in memoriam - phillip hughes

it has been two years.already.
not that i have thought of you
in these two years.
or that i knew of you
before that.
it was a fleeting rendezvous
with the idea of you.
(as it is with all rendezvous)

you were born five long years
after i was,and the script
placed your exit
three days before
your twenty sixth birthday.

(i remember feeling then
that my twenty sixth
was the year of fatalities
of another kind
from which i haven’t since recovered.)

I don’t know your story.
(except what they built
over twitter and other eulogies)
does it matter?
you were there. and then you weren’t.

two years later
there is a small report 
in an online newspaper
on the other side of the world
that has found time and space
to spare for you.

And i remember,
i had cried then. at my workplace.
stolen away from sympathetic voices
that discussed you over coffee.
what a tragedy, they had said,
with the customary sighs
before moving on
to the gorgeous earrings
of one of the mourners.
at home i had kept replaying
the scene. on youtube
and in my head.
trying to make sense
of this script that was giving me
more screen time.

two years. to the day.
loss finds me again
(but it is not yours, chimes an afterthought)
and staring at that news report
i am not sure what to do.
i look at your picture - twenty six
would have suited you.
perhaps i should look up
what i was like
at twenty eight.

(whirring in the background - the playwright must have had a plan.)

kashmir

k is a recurring dream
that i can never fully recall.
it stays with me in snapshots.
sometimes it is
the image of a bleeding eye.
corroded silver jewellery.
sometimes it is
the fear of forgetting my name.
an abandoned poem.
they fight over it
on national television.
k faithfully visits me those nights
and pulls me into
a tug of war at the end
of which both of us lie
fallen in swathes of blood.
(I don't wake up then
bathed in sweat and fear
like in the movies.
nor run to wash my hands -
"out, damned spot".
I usually hope to sanitise
it all, us, with local disinfectants -
an old song, a childhood picture
with the right sepia tones,
a faiz couplet, the whiff of saffron -
if i can help it.)
I have also come to predict it.
book nights, autumn evenings,
sunset skies
days of lingering solitude
have a dedicated space for it.

But never in so many years
has the dream been
of that picture postcard
on whose one side is
a dewy valley lush green
from days of love
and on the other
in your handwriting
slanting like the sunshine
the words -
'paradise is a dream.'

you took away the paradise
(though it wasn't only you)
and i burnt the postcard
(though it wasn't only me)
now the dream remains
an ashen legacy of crimson.

a moment

in the middle of the day
a little before
bored office goers
break for lunch
and the air reverberates
with the joy of the city's
children at the end of school day
silence prepares
for its victim.

and among many crevices
finds him suspended
precariously
in the space between
a written and unsent whatsapp message.
at that point
afternoon traffic becomes tone deaf
unsure thumbs stay frozen
just a moment longer
and in the din of everyday life
as the right thumb
reaches out to discard the message
And the right hand takes the phone
and puts it away in a back pocket
or a sling bag
or throws it on the bed
 
- unknown to you
in that whiff
silence has caught you.
and the words that will find you
in a minute from then
will never be able to make up
for that moment of silence.