Alone

When I walk backwards now to undo

Miles and miles of tangled messsy years

Broken promises, live wounds that erupt 

At the slightest sound of your sleepy baritone;

Seven steps around the fire to mark promises 

Of all those lifetimes and of this one

I find myself alone as I was all along

Unmarked Birthdays

We had held hands at the curve of the road

And let go when the ocean swam over it

Now when aeons apart, I smell your music 

In the dark green folds of my bridal saree

But I continue to dance to another's rhythm

All longing that I ever had, pours from the sky

As that very ocean which had torn aside our paths

All that is drenched are those moments which 

Came and went as unmarked birthdays 

Once our days, and now, just yours somewhere.

Deep-red

My soul plunged into its fossil pools of silence

And gathered these deep-red corals of adoration  

Your breath on my multi-coloured breathlessness 

Breathed a million star-dust filled bubbles; and 

of letters written on your skin, what can I say,

Only this: I wrote you an unmetered, short poem

and prayed to a multitude of gods that it is worn

Around your neck invoking deep-red dawns, 

Cracking stardust bubbles all through the night.

Maybe

But then there were only roads

which led from nowhere into nothing 

Hot afternoons melting into the ground 

Beneath our feet and with them, any sense

Of sticking to one or even many, maybe.

What was clear was the sky above us 

But then, who cared for clouds that 

Had no shadows, no rain, nothing to show

That they are alive  and aren't just ghosts

Conjured up by past memories of betrayal

That word which throbs at the heart of 

All heartaches that ever were born

on this planet. Mine, anyway. Maybe.

Blue birds and bears from a faraway forest

Orange stemmed ephemeral white flowers

None of which had any name, no sound that

Is ever heard by those of us who live

Half-immersed in an unending mist of 

What-if-we-had- met-twenty-years-ago. Maybe. 

An ocean's thirst

Her image was the flame into which he could

stare but not fall; 

circumambulate on cold 

nights, rain-drenched afternoons; 

but not hold

And when a white summer came to be, 

he let her go; 

As one does of ocean wave 

echoes; 

When indoors, alone on white sheets.

Everyone at any point 

could have had it all

But those miserly hands of fate hold it out 

Only to those who were 

not him, or her.

And it is true no matter 

What they tell you;

That the ocean thirsts too

For rain;

as much as for those flames

Council of Women

What we are inside is not always the same. Skin changes from week to week and one has bad hair days just as one has black cloud mood days. But I am talking not of mood, but what we hold onto to as our identity. Skin changes but faces stay the same. Moods change but the you, within you, remain. Even while wearing different costumes, ala, council of Sheldons.

Or do you?

Long ago, a woman haunted me for months. I rooted for her as long as the Husband was in love with her and how! She was his muse and he, the fervent gardener who would teach her his secrets to evoke tender flowers, shoots and life itself in his world of plants. He would come home to her beauty and a cornucopia of her hand-made delicacies. Then, dressed in silks, she would walk with him around the garden, dreaming of a grove there, digging a lotus pond here, small, large dreams of matrimonial aspirations that had no means to drive, but could only be ever so gently stirred like those snow globes. A world of their own and not meant for this world. I was wearing those silks myself and waited for a man who knew his trees to turn up in my life. Evenings were fragrant with betel leaves, sandalwood, hand upon a shoulder. Sometimes eyes looking into another pair to quench an unnamable thirst. At others, silence stretching into the night sky and returning with star-studded desire to become one with the universe. That woman was blessed, alas for a decade. And then came the god of slow death with a smile and grace that matched hers. She annointed him in sandalwood and incense too. 

Sarita, the man's distant cousin with a nebulous past is then invited to help him tend to the garden as his Wife is now in the arms of that god who couldn't quite leave. Sarita, tall and dark; Sarita of green fingers and a beauty that can only be perceived by men. Women tended to think of her as plain and boring. Her staid gait and underplayed colors, her far away gaze, her books and incoherent thoughts, she surely belonged to a snow globe world. 

One on the shores of an unburdened ocean, which always gave the impression that it would only take a moment for the waves to spill over and destroy this very earth with its intensity. Sarita who was in a past life, the man's only playmate. When he was orphaned by life, her Father had taken him in. Now in a reversal of fates, she had nothing to hold onto, no one to relay on and pass on that troubling offer of a job from him. She came into his life again, bringing with her, a lifetime of forgotten, unacknowledged love for him.

At first Niraja was delighted and I was left admiring her devotion. Aditya's routine was back to the usual. Breakfast at the mango grove with tea brewed just the way he liked, the color of monsoon surge in the river. She could smell the hot puris and coconut laced potatoes, sighing a happy sigh, "this girl, just goes overboard on spices, but he will love that". And wait for him to come in after picking flowers for her room. Sarita's deft management of the house meant that servants weren't stealing coconuts and flowers anymore, the shop was being run by Sarita's fathers accountant now. Aditya had time for her and he would sit there, fully dressed, talking about the day ahead and shared concerns on the business. At first, she felt bad about Sarita being left out of these family gatherings and call her in. " Why are you so shy Sarita? Is aditya new to you? Don't you know him for longer than me? Come here, sit by me, he needs your help as I am getting weaker by the day. Sarita, can you please adjust my pillow? Can you please make sure he has his lunch sent by 1 sharp? He doesn't like rice overcooked. Sarita, I can't thank you enough for being here" 

Slowly the girl who was never shy in her life found it in her to take things over as she was born to. She was the tomboy who had taught Aditya to climb trees, who knew the omens of weather and bird calls like none other. What customs of the orderly world would hold her back? The gardeners were told when to water and which flower stalks to cut at what time of the day. The outlet became a bouquet by itself with the way flowers were arranged, her fingers breathed intense perfume into jasmines, nerolis, champaks and the very air into which they were born and died. She asserted her knowledge and told Aditya how to manage his business, what ties suit him better, which shoes to wear for what suits and one day, which flowers to pick for Niraja's room. By then, I getting jittery. Not knowing who to root for anymore. This Sarita, that Niraja, both once blessed and now abandoned by whatever it is that shapes our smiles and sense of wellbeing in moments of solitude. One full of life and the latter at the brink of losing it. I wanted them both to wear those silks with me and go for a walk with that man who knew his trees. 

Meanwhile, gathering gallons of easy cheer from deep within her spirit, Niraja held one-sided conversations with the God of slow death. Will it be be done in months? Will I have time to hold a child? What happens to my memories when I am gone, do they come with me or will they linger in this garden? How can I be sure that this bottomless hole consuming me, will not affect him for life? Should I ask him to marry again? Will that be after I am gone or will that be when I am sitting here limbless and paralysed by fates and by my body? Each day, she gathered a tiny bit of courage to face the inevitable all the while planning to leave behind nothing but graciousness behind for aditya. She asked him again and again, please get married when I am still around. He would visibly be upset which thrilled her to bits. A cruel game of seeking answers for a deep-hidden question that all love asks at one point or the other. Is love the point or the loved one? If it were another, would you still love the same way? And his frown, his irritation at being asked that was the only balm for her heartache at the inevitability of fate. Then she would grit herself and say firmly, "I will make sure Adi that you will have a life more beautiful than one with me". I am sure I heard him mutter, just as she did, "not without you". I lingered in her room, oblivious to the change of season and mood in the house. Some days, I heard laughter, but she didn't. On others, moonlight came to greet her quietly and wake her from hours of oblivion while I dreamed of gurgling streams and mountain paths. Days passed into lengthy afternoons and then came winter.

A cold dark cloud entered Niraja's bed-ridden world when she saw Sarita brush something off Aditya's  shirt. After that, for almost a week, she was not  even capable of sitting up in the bed. Aditya was coming now only in late evenings when she was slightly better and could open her eyes for a little longer than a blink. Sarita's hand on Aditya's shoulder woke her up from a deep slumber again and again. She asked for a mirror. Wanted to change her saree. Have a bath. Wear moringa in her hair. She slipped in and out of consciousness. She held on to me and I stroked her forehead." Love is not only holding on but also letting go", she said. "Love is about being bigger than what I am, being able to give and not regret". "Yes", I whispered and looked at poor Sarita holding her hand. Was she guilty or happy? This stranger in the house? Was she in love or just noble? I wondered and peered through my glasses at her love-ridden face. She was around, taking care of Niraja as if she were a child. 

Then came a moment when Niraja awoke, drew all of her strength and sat up on the bed. "I will make sure you will suffer hell, you fallen woman. How dare you seize my most precious possession!" Then she fell, lifeless.

(This is a retelling of a Tagore's story called the garden. Sarita was Sarala and a few things have moved around) 

Beauty's black spot

So busy was I arranging my joy

Into bouquets of memories 

Those red kisses overlayed 

With white sprays of hope

Star spangled afternoons

Entwined in arms, legs, hair

Breaths, blankets, bites and all

That I forgot to draw a black dot 

on treasured touches to 

ward time's inevitable eye.

And now when all around 

me is the remains of 

a yesterday, 

I remember 

your voice and know 

That I was once alive. 

Will you?

I will walk with you down those hills

As the shadow follows it's sunlit self 

Across those untouched desert sands

Places named after sounds and winds 

Will you follow footsteps of tomorrow?

I will be in the starlight that you seek 

At a full moon dusk, half-lit, half-drowned 

At an ocean that churned without remorse

And gently curved your fatelines into mine 

Will you set your palm upon mine? 

I will wait for you near our river at the alcove

A hundred years ago, a million years from now

You parted my hair and painted scarlet kisses

And brought me sarees woven of cardamom scents 

Will you tie those jasmine dreams in my hair?

I will be the name that you will close your eyes to

As cold water touches your face in naked spaces 

Passing Through

I woke up this morning and realised I am still seven. My daughter held all of her eight years in her left hand and rattled off names of Egyptian gods and their Grecian counterparts, with some Indian versions thrown in for effect. A collector of facts, book worm and nerd, on her way to being either an Egyptologist or a Zoologist (because Amma, pets are fun but vets are boring).  She has figured out in her little head, a space for herself in this world where I don't quite fit that way. And then they talk of genes.  My friends know they are nearing forty. Know that they need to save a third of what they earn to have the same life as they have now when they retire. Colleagues nearly half my age talk to me of career planning and work-life balance. People seem to know why to marry, when and whom to go out with. Where to make love and when not to talk, stalk, pine, or be seen craving. When I was twenty, I was gently shaken when a Turkish Friend of mine complained about the Color of curtains in our dorm and went out to get them changed with drapes from IKEA. Weren't they just supposed to be what they are? Who would have thought that one can have opinions on dinner plates and handbags? Turns out there was a whole load of stuff that goes in this world which doesn't quite enter my neural networks. Am I still just passing through? 

Finished

How many times has this been finished before? I can't recollect the number of goodbyes folded neatly into tin trunks of quickly forgotten nondescript train rides, those furtive night rides of urgent telegrams of lost grandfathers and imminent weddings. But today I sensed his silence meant what his eyes had once said. We are sad, but this is truly finished. Finito. Khatam. Spring, rain, winter's whims; hell even summer changes its unrelenting stance and then, everything changes and maybe falls apart on the other side of the globe. I was nineteen. He was born on the same date a year before. We celebrated our birthdays together. I knew all of him: red knickers, stubby camel brand pink flowered white pencils, acoustic guitars and slow moving Adam's apple and a penchant for my spectacles.

Our moms were friends. I guess you could say we were too. Except we weren't really. His elder brother and I were. He was always a little different, happy on his own. Actually, never really happy. His smile shone like the half moon, vaguely poignant and something about his tall frame sang aloud songs of ancient retributions. Perhaps the gods fought their battles with the demons between his ears. He would always take his time to respond to his name. As if Chinna was someone else he had to summon up from elsewhere.

Then we moved out of the school and his neighbourhood. 

Moms continued to visit each other but we quickly got lost in our own lives. Maybe five, or was it seven years after I last celebrated my birthday with him, Chinna called me on his sixteenth birthday. We never thought of meeting, it was funny if you put some thought into it now. It was. But we spoke, each Friday afternoon at 3, two sharp rings meant he was home alone and I could call. We spoke of his dreams of being an Air Force pilot, I spoke of my imminent nobel prize for literature. He taught me all about cars and cameras which was all promptly erased by the click of the receiver. I read to him anything from Marquez to Dante. And Tagore, many times over, Tagore. Some days I would slip my furtive writings and could vaguely sense his thrill, pride or sheer amusement. He was always happy, a little too happy.

One day though his voice sounded like an old Hindi playback singer. I told him so. He said he saw that happen. He saw his Mother being smothered to death by a pillow by his Father. I thought he was telling one of his Roald dahlish stories. I let that be. Mom was surely meeting Durga Aunty for all these years. Wasn't it last Diwali that we exchanged sweets? Chinna was making it up until the story was much too gory in all its details flashing in my imagination, as real as real gets. It was around 11 in the night. His brother was in bed and he was playing with his cars which went under the door and he followed them to a ghoulish scene. A white pillow, his mom's purple saree splashed all over the bed and her eyes, red and teary and struggling to live. The keeper of the pillow it seems was supremely composed. Smiling even. And when the act was over, he went back to sleep next to his brother 

The next days he said were all in a blur but his Mother was draped in a red saree not purple and that was the last he saw of her. His Father gave him her ring to wear but it was way too big so he let that be in his school bag until one day, he realised it was gone too, like her. Inexplicably gone. Not even a goodbye. I told him good bye then. And placing the receiver down, ran straight to my mother's arms and smelled only her perfumed hands for the longest time. I said goodbye to his horrible tale. The next Friday afternoon, I was in the bath. A week later, with a book and a few weeks later the telephone stopped ringing.

Did chinni direct a movie yet? I asked and the brothers' Russian wife looked shocked. It seemed he died a few days after his twentieth birthday. By asking for too much sleep from his Pharmacist Friend. And I was left craving to say good bye to those memories that are so fresh and so long begone.The brother held me for a long time and all that could have ever been stood between us finished. Finito. Khatam.

But there was so many jumps and starts! There were so many  fights and make ups. Months of ignored calls and weeks of make-up calls lasting all evening. A whole year filled with growing up together virtually. Was there anything he would not say to me or I to him? 

But, goodbye, How could we say goodbye now?

Lara

Lara was necessary for dr zhivago. But she was also necessary for the count who raped her, for the rebel who saved her life and the doctor himself who was married to another. Lara was the theme of his life. When around, there was no other. And yet, other ideas of russia transported him and others like him until he realised his privilege and family could still not keep him afloat from the currents of the world around him. In all the time he grappled with the ideas and ideals of a new country that allowed and exalted his love story, dr zhivago always knew, Lara stayed true to herself. Part and apart from the world around her, Lara was a force unto herself. In a manner he could admire from afar, but never be.

The story of an affair that ended

Of all the stories I have learnt to listen, you know that there is only one theme that keeps recurring in my mind and around the space that shapes letters into colors, smells, tastes and touch somewhere within. So today, I will tell you a story. Half imagined and half listened to. I haven't read the novel that is supposed to recount a love more tragic and heartfelt than that of Tolstoy's Anna. But have scooped love in my cupped hands many times over from the gentle rain of RK Narayan's the English teacher. This is the story of his mentor, one who is supposed to have been at once a spy and a literary genius. A nobel nominee who irrationally, inexplicably and irrevocably fell in love with a mother of five.

Up there on the first window from the left, can you imagine for me an exquisitely talented Greene? And his married, catholic muse? Namesake of the lady who brought tea to England. Wife of an extremely rich catholic. A devout catholic herself. How many passionate afternoons and poignant dusks has that window been drenched in more than a Hundred odd years ago. I felt that cold hand of separation pass my heart too when I looked up too. Did you see passion?

They say Greene was a woman's man. He chose to be catholic after he met his wife, twenty years before he knew C. Some say he was disturbed deeply, prone to bouts of depression. There were times when he attempted to end it all but suicide isn't a writer's muse ever, is it?

And so childhood grew it's dark dreams within but elsewhere  there was poetry, pages and pages of a voice that craved to take shape in letters, Rosetta stones of desire waiting to be deciphered. One after another, spring and winter vied for that particular blend of happiness and heartache found in fingers intertwined, remembered long after faces, lips and limbs cease to coexist.

The years passed in a blur. He met his wife, knew he must have been in love. Converted and promptly got two kids. Restlessness never left him though. He travelled to remote corners of the world. Worked in exactly those activities that are bound to make you feel alive with the thrill of death close on your heels. Spied for the British, the Mexicans, the Cubans and all the while, filled pages and pages of unfulfilled longings. Other people's stories, other people's lives. Yes, but were there glimpses of his emotions, moods and colors? His portraits of thrill and luxury and leisure? Did I say love? Because he never did.

At first, they just glanced at each other when each thought the other wasn't looking. The magnets are not jut drawn to each other but draw power from other's force. Slowly, the fire consumed until it burned their nights, days, friends and holidays. Perhaps he dreamt of it all and she was just drawn to his fame. Or maybe he was drawn to her clearly unfulfilled needs. Yes, there are hormones everywhere. Growing beards and drawing periodic blood baths but those hormones, they existed in all those people living below that room and above, no? So who gave her the courage to draw him out in a Long kiss right there in that room above the coffee shop? This is why the Protestants said Catholics should be banned from politics. You see, they worshipped those pagan gods with Christian names. Someone named Eros was meant to be buried. What business did he have in a church?

But no one in that room could hold himself away. Long afternoons filled with the throes of letters, words, poems of sighs and skin upon skin. Separation, another day, another week, another month of not knowing whether the lips will meet ever again, that font of liquid life.

He moved out of his house. Could not bear to have another's perfume on his bed. Another's presence in his space. She continued to keep her home. Taking extreme care to keep her blinds on. The Husband's each need was anticipated and not merely met when requestsed. Who knows, he must have fallen in love with her again because of this. But Greene? Oh poor Greene burned of jealous wrath. She wouldn't come because of this and that and him, the husband and her, the child.

The war loomed closer, his jealousy even darker. Each day, he followed her. Kept a track of her movements. Who does she talk to? Why does she not come? Was there another? Did she have enough of me? Was I merely a temporary shack of pleasure? Round and round his thoughts went and all his travels couldn't bring down those curtains onto his mangled thoughts. But those moments that she came? Ah, the windows were lit in gold. The moon and stars dallied in bright afternoon light. Greene levitated into another world. Was there any other than that place above the cafe?

One day she said she can't anymore. And she didn't come. That was it. As simple as that was the end of that affair.

That story was longer than mine though. She prayed for her husbands safety and vowed to stop her affairs because of which she thought god spared her Husband from illness or thunder. Greene found out a tad too late. God took her life instead. But those stories, those stories make no sense. Do they?

She must have known it was to end. He knew it had to. But if it did, how was he to breathe? She died and filled him with her breath. How easy it is for writers to make up stories. As for me, I think my tales stop short of being stories at all. Just at that point where life starts screaming aloud in my ears and says. There is no point to all of this. Move on, write a poem. Move on, get another pen.

An evening walk in London

So today was raining and the classic English weather. Foggy, misty, dickensy and a little bit of Moor's last sigh touch to the air

Decided to join a walking tour which explores the "city" of London. Old London founded by the Romans, the Londenium. Today, home to some hundreds and thousands of Bankers by the day and a mere handful of thousand ultra rich guys by the night. Most expensive real estate in the world I am told. The walk rightfully starts here at this luxurious shopping mall :-)

This then is the oldest bank in the world- Bank of England: which still pretty much holds most of the world's fortune hostage. Imagine those days of the plunder, er the empire and the blood starts to slowly warm up your Temples with an unjustifiable rage for all things to do with time and whatever it is that runs this world. Or is it money?

Don't miss the pink flowers there. Quite symbolic I thought. The prettiness of fortune framing the intent to overpower

While such uncharitable thoughts ran amok in my brain, someone started to kiss right there and suddenly, I felt fortune and love were Mother and Son. Lakshmi and kama. 

This building to the left is home to "the city's" own Lord Mayor. Not Londons mayor. The banking district is its own city with its own mayor and police. Er, anyone's Guess why democracy doesn't work in financial district eh? Fun part is the Lord Mayor is not paid. But can drink and eat and stay in one of the most expensive homes in the world. I was beginning to fantasise living there with no salary but all decked up in luxury. A bit like a keep to the city's churlish fortune.

That street is the world's shortest street apparently covering one building. Ofcourse the Lord Mayors mansion. Simply called, the mansion. London baffles you with its straightforwardness. The inner city is simply "the city". Lord Mayors mansion is simply "the Manson". Place where they sold poultry is simply "Poultry" symbolised by that statue of a boy on that building doing unpalatable things to -what's that bird? A goose?

Now it's time for some random shots that look like I knew exactly what I was looking at through my lens. Not

Let's get back to the story, shall we now? Along came an Australian sometime in the nineties and decided to add some coloured stone to the landscape. Apparently they sent that architect packing. But the building is impressive for whatever it's worth. Not least because it hosts one of those expensive French restaurants with exclusive balconies which were a great window to escape the heartache of being let down by the goodness of wealth operating via the Lehman brothers. Suicides after a glass of white wine continued to a fashion and less of a news item for a couple of years apparently. The French restaurant, continues to operate, unashamed of being part of life and death so intimately. And true to London tradition is called "the silver bird". Bird, for poultry. Silver for er, the instruments used to dismantle the bird, I Guess. 

During the blitz, those years of the world war when London was constantly bombed out, this site was discovered to have remains of a roman temple to Mithras. Yes, the Romans were fond of the Iranian sun god it seems. What matters is that Bloomberg which took over this site keeps those thousands of years worth of artefacts in a private museum. And then we keep wondering when will Britain return us the kohinoors and chola bronzes!

The great fire of London in 1666, September-ofcourse, which other month can it be but that- ravaged the city and brought it down to its knees. Wiped out two thirds of houses, some 80 odd churches and because we don't know the numbers, perhaps not too many people that mattered. Some building scaffolds remained only to be fashioned hundreds of years later into...Starbucks. What do we know!

Don't you love looking at all these well dressed men looking all important and animated and so sure of themselves at after hour drinks? Do we appear that way to children at junctions who look into trains and buses and cars in India?

And so the story goes. London's great fire started in a bakery by a maid who didn't put off the wooden fire. It might have started because of a mad Frenchman who claimed he started it and was therefore hanged for it. Or maybe it was the envious Germans who did that to spite the English. Perhaps the king ordered the fire to get rid of the plague which threatened to spread further into the royal ramparts? It doesn't matter much now, does it? Who started the fire and why. Because, as with life, whys don't matter. What happened because of the fire is significant too. A rebirth. A chance to forget and soar. And Christopher Ryan was the genius who soared on the wings of misfortune. Rebuilding the city. Refashioning an imagined future. Recreating some 50 odd of the 80 Churches that were gone. I liked this one the most. Rebirth is almost always stark and significant isn't it? Why involve frivolousness that belongs only to moments?

Somethings were surely learnt from the fire. Enough of wood said the architects. More of stone. Separated archways and window frames. Regulations on space. City controlling living spaces. History is all of our life put together in flashback sequences that lose their weight but stay on as colors of the dusk. That particular way the door would swing in your open top bathrooms of the yore. Now, no more.

When I say no more. I mean ofcourse, graveyards where life is no more. But weight is still left around. Piled on top of each other until the city can't take the rising mounds anymore. Dickens liked this graveyard it seems. Maybe he sat with his muse on evenings like this and revoked all of his could have beens into his unreadable stories?

Empty chairs near the graveyards. Perhaps for those of us who would like a muse too. I imagined walking around there when the lights went off at night. They said at one point the coffins were recycled. And much to the horror of the residents, they had among them, nail marks and scratches. Did they bury some of them alive? Maybe they should make sure like we do and burn it all to ashes

Just when you think graveyards get too gloomy, along comes a remnant of summer and cheers the picture frames

To stay put in this mood, we chose a place which is shady. Er shades apparently had nothing to do with hritik roshan. Just drinking spots. And this one apparently survived the London fire even!

As soon as I ordered my pious port (remember I am fasting 😂), this group of gentlemen started bitching about someone's- Wife. What else?

Read closely. Don't say it aloud but I Guess they do have a point.


And so some three drinks later, I couldn't care less about bitching, graveyards or the effing fire from five centuries ago. But onwards we marched in solidarity and did I mention rain, racism and political correctness of never mentioning the British empire in front of a drunk Indian? Here we stood in awe of this memorial tower 200 feet tall standing extacly 200 feet away from the now hallowed bakery that started the inferno. All symbols of hope are engulfed by time who has wings. He holds, he flees. Does he heal? Who knows? He  never stays Long enough for us to find out right? But see here? He holds wounded London in his arms and there she rises in hope again. If only we can all erect tall towers for all those infernos. And pay homage to all that was burnt and lost. And then just move on like Shakespeare did each day that he crossed the London bridge to his home.

And towards the end, there are always markets. Somehting to buy to ward off guilt or whatever it is that aches at the bottom of your heart that can be nicotinised for a bit with carbohydrates and chocolate and green prices of paper.

Don't you however, love the place where you can buy pens. And books and harry porter dreams. Right next to where cattle are hung on hooks.

The dragons are everywhere. To ward off the evil eye. With the upcoming brexit and three hundred years of acquired karmic debts they better have a thousand of these handy. what an uncharitable thought! But well, they looted us to where we stand now too.

The first two pictures of the upside down building are for my architect Friend. Lyods the insurers of the insurers. The richest buggers on earth. And they chose that steel and concrete too. There must be something to stripped raw power exposed in concrete no?

And the last memory I have of my drunk evening. No the penultimate one because the last was even more special. This is the church of "happy clapping" as our guide called it . Apparently. This is where Shakespeare prayed Everyday. Until he bacame too rich to live in this part of the town.Prayer and wealth. Something to that too.

And to close your vogan session. I was dropped off at my hotel tired and exhausted by a taxi driver who was a professional boxer, an avid reader, a meditation junkie and a Christopher Hitchins and Sam Harris fan. He said he was in Thailand to find the one thing that he is missing in life. He didn't know what it is but he knows he will find it in India. And me taking the taxi was a sign for him to follow his true calling. I wished that I don't say anything more to ruin his moment. And came back to a sleepless hotel room. If something is indeed missing in my life, do I even wish to find it?

The last train caught my attention then. 

Origins

I have no origins, no beginnings and endings 

Atleast, I remember none, except maybe 

Anxious Diwali evenings spent waiting for 

My glorious, lonesome Ammas' scooter to 

Be parked where it belonged.

Flooded streets on monsoon afternoons

Holding hands with a little one who thought

I knew our way back home 

A cyclone that could have eliminated 

A busfull of sixteen year old dreams of a world

which they'd live to never find

Much awaited flight to cold chapters 

of loneliness from an unworldly passion

That never stopped yearning 

Hands held after tears dried up 

Into easy compromises, smooth evenings

Long afternoons of sad songs on loop 

Maybe, the beginning was as in movies

from Russia, something as pointless 

as fingers pointing together to a red star

Your Story

Your stories are all silent movies of the yore 

Painted in every shade of white and grey

In the hushed hours between wakefulness 

Jump, start, loop and return to where 

Everything is only just beginning.

And you, the hero of every book I ever  read

At that turn when your story met mine

They say night jasmines bloom to this day. 

Telugu Song

There we sang our love song

Twins bound by destiny,

Resting both our heads on arms

of life, dear life, as precious 

As paramecium, amoeba,

Redwood trees, Brahminy kites.

And therein we sowed

Lies that kept us alive 

Water, air, that deep blue 

sky, all but real, a screen 

Perhaps for what lies

Deep inside you and me

Then they sent us to earth

But when we fell from those stars

Your flesh was made in another's 

Womb. My heart beat to a strange

Rhythm. In time, screens and frames

Made me a different you. 

Our forgotten song smudged 

by stardust, buried in oceans' roar 

Caroused through my veins, your

nerves. A stranger's sigh, another's 

Nimble limbs: all these and more, 

Echos of a past that screamed to live 

One afternoon, 

one evening 

and one full night,

dear twin, we hummed

that sweet telugu song 

Lo, we were alive

One, never alone

I will rise above this treacle spill

of sticky, needy desire to belong

Like a bird soaring on high winds

One day, I will look down on these

Lonesome musings as oceans that

Hide mountain tops of unheeded love

There above the clouds, beneath those

Stars, in that unending blue, I will rise

To hold all your hands, all your hearts 

And each of those moments filled with 

Tears, laughter, passion, quiet solitude 

Which only deepens with two, never one

And I will be one with you all.

And never again, will I be alone. 

If

If you were there 

where I was,

then I wouldn't be

Where I am now.

But then, you and I 

And nothing else

Matters in this night

Of utter gloom.

Tomorrow, the sun 

May shine his 

Crinkled smile;

But today's moon

Will remain doomed,

To fourteen days of 

Trying to be full.

Only to let go

Of all that is light.

If you were here,

Where I am,

Seeking switches 

In sheer darkness;

You would know

or maybe not,

How sunlight smells 

On empty nights.

Kisses

Heart broken, drunk on your kisses

I melt in my tears forlorn, forgone 

Your eyes meet mine up there in 

Those clouds and loneliness smiles

In heart broken kisses 

Lonely

I dare them all come to claim you

Those who left you to dark nights

And one day, give it a smile, give it 

Ten thousand guiles, call it a day

And get on, with being friends and all

I dare you to say you feel lonely 

Wounds

I drape a hundred lights on scabs of gloom

And dance around words, flights, dinners

Blurred faces, wide smiles, crinkled eyes

Not a drop of rain, not a word of you 

But at night, I stare at that sky, dark

as hell, with its zillions of burning wounds

Words, Again

Again and again, I ask of myself. 

What lies did I weave in words

Again and again, those words laugh 

Who are you to spin us so 

The silk moths ate mulberry bushes 

And along came a spider's saliva

But words, we are just thoughts lingering

On snow clapped peaks off far away dawns

I lie, shake myself and again, I ask 

Why words, why not words, 

why again, these words?

Goodbye

And so along comes goodbye to say hello to our souls

Such a long journey from one lifetime to another

All we could gather were a bundle full of moments 

Here take my share, move on, be happy again 

I will nurse my goodbyes in sunsets again 

Your Image

When the stars fade away, our breaths will remain 

And as vapour clouds herald a great summer rain 

Perhaps my hand will reach out to the great void 

And touch your voice from behind those clouds 

I swear to you, that I did know, it's your skin 

Your lonesome eyes and your hungry embrace

In all that darkness which was in my mother's womb 

And your sweet smile, the last image I'd ever see

Never Did

I don't want you

I don't need you

I never did, never will

But what of those moments?

They were what they were

What need for need 

In moments that crumble

To dust in a moment

Who wants to want

Anyone who lingers 

Never did 

Belt Up

Belt up, buck up, shut up and let's go

On such a long road to finding pieces 

To glue together. 

Yes, words shatter souls

Hearts lay in dust of scorn

Contempt and malice 

Overwhelm what once was 

Tender touch of lust 

Cities were razed to dust

Stories were lost to history 

And yet, blood flows downwards

Sky is filled with dawns and dusks

Of impartial punctuality 

And you and I breathe 

So come on, let's go

Find what pieces we can 

Of our lost selves and glue together 

If a mangled piece of me 

Gets strangled in your going forward

Step, I will be blessed. So let me belt up.  

Obsession

Obsession is my new middle name

There were days, nay, years that passed

Not knowing bacteria from a boson

And decades of learning of the dance 

Within of receptors, proteins folding up

Unfolding, snapping and latching 

Moving cells, life, blood, eyes, your 

Deep grey pools, no different from mine

And yet, in all that's within, as different 

As a bacteria to a boson 

I obsess these days on meanings

On words said, not meant

On feelings that were once alive

And throbbed under a heart that beat 

All of its lifetimes' beats in those seconds

When you held my hand in worship

Of the one force of nature that is alive 

In your dance and mine, together 

I obsess on the word together 

Alone and never apart, together and 

So separate, blood mingled once 

And yet, leading us on distant forked

Paths of half-alive memories of

Moonlight, star dust, yellow orioles

Hundreds of steps together, now

Together, no longer. Obsessed.

No longer. 

You, again

Dearest you, who is nether mine nor desires to be

I sought you in yesterdays and tomorrows

In words and clouds, unmade beds, thoughtless kisses

I circled your space hoping to enter 

Through a tiny peephole into your heart;

There were bumps there that knew me well

Black holes that ate us alive into times' dark jaws

Hologram paths that ended before they started 

Rope swings to churning spiral galaxies 

But you closed your eyes and I went blind

Today is wearing her funeral garb and 

Yesterdays like widows wearing glass bangles 

Chase unicorns close enough to smell star dust their breaths. 

And there is no time for tomorrow now 

Only dreams fall off those cliffs that separate us

Take it all

I will leave them all to you and go

Here, have them, dearest stranger,

Sweetest Friend. Have all of these, do.

Skin that felt life within and jumped

Into my mouth from your heart;

Those rain cloud afternoons, 

Time stretching itself lazily

On eternity's windowsill.

Yellow orioles, blue pea flowers 

A hundred cracked dusks, 

Everything that can be touched with eyes

Mouth, hands, feet, skin, lips,

Forever lips, more of those arms

Gravity defying arms, star dust encrusted 

Arms, entwined fingers, entrenched veins

Your blood in my womb for a moment 

All that was alive in me once

Those words that made sense

Take them all, please do. 

Stars and sea horses, trees and grass

Temple stairs and two earthen lamps

Secrets, dreams, trips to nowhere 

Those wedding steps that went searching

For the end of our universe, where it began

Take it all. Dearest stranger, go.

Beauty's black spot

So busy was I arranging my joy

Into bouquets of memories 

Those red kisses overlayed 

With white sprays of hope

Star spangled afternoons

Entwined in arms, legs, hair

Breaths, blankets, bites and all

So busy that I forgot to

draw a black dot on 

Your treasured face to 

ward time's inevitable eye.

And so beauty is fated to die,

But what burns was once alive. 

Grow

You came into my life 

like a sweet dream 

from another age. 

I loved like trees do

those clouds which

come from afar to pour 

Unborn blessings into

Flowers, seeds and

All things meant to

move on and grow

One dream led to

another and by then

The clouds were empty

Of all songs of rain

We Grieve

Leaves, galaxies, trains know when it's time 

To leave.  

But who will teach pain to rhyme with rain

And leave it's marks on melted sand?

Neither do I say, nor does he understand

There is no gain. Wait, except maybe pain

But we run after them; rainbows and rain

And grieve 

The passing of innocence and of time 

Each farewell, a familiar flight

 I was born with my insides turned out, blood and veins

Seeking to bury into armfuls of twiddling, whimsical lanes 

Many voids, empty windows, rooms full of light

Each bed, a new hunger; each farewell, a familiar flight  

One morning, the wind sent her wedding gift

A singing frangipani, lost and found adrift

You ask of my god, why do elephants run

when they can trample cats, I wish he knew then 

Why do faces that form in clouds smile

Just as you when tears cloud sweet guile

Tiny Love

Ambling along in an unguarded agora 

I closed my palm tight on my tiny love

And gazed at all that I wanted for now

Dear love, you broken magnificent gem 

Which wasn't enough for a life time together

They said you could buy me regret forever

Melted Memories

Colours of the sky change too

each day, each minute

I with you, you with me. 

Don't you see how time passes 

as sand from my hand to yours

One moment that was frozen 

floated away into the clouds

To melt into the stars someday

Don't you see how time rains 

Onto oceans of melted memories

Rope swings on backyard trees 

remained in their imagined future place

But what if the earth never moves again?

A second death

I look into mirrors, on the morning after 

And count my bruises and blessings, 

I worship this space, skin and soul that you touched

Wonder if the air that kissed our truth is perfumed still 

With that primal urge to stubbornly converge

Your oh-so-distant life with the not-quite-mine 

I knew then, no one is afraid of a second death 

That Very Sun

The moon had always chased the sun; 

Strapped as it were to earth's gravity,

 

But, all its sighs do is to 

Pull on heartstrings of lunatics 

Far beneath the clouds 

That they wished to climb

Those clouds, they wish too 

For moonless, star-drenched nights

Where twin souls go to make love

On numbered nights of togetherness

And ages later, smell each other's lips

In first rains drenching the ground 

While the moon pursues her fortnightly 

Death, her undying desire for that very sun 

Write me an L

Lines and letters of love

Lust and all things languid

Laid-back moments of leisurely kisses,

Lucky-lever of a lump in your throat 

Leading me back from left-leaning

Lanes of lingering loneliness 

Lightness, laughter and a luminous light

Lost and found each day in 

Labyrinths of laborious laws 

Write Me a Poem

You say, I am a woman made of dreams  

Blood, nerves, hormones, a dark womb

Dear stranger, will you write me a poem 

Of stardust, sweet lust, melancholy memories?

I am made of that strand of moonlight

Which descends on new moon nights

Lights a fire of un-wieldy obsession

In ocean waves, love pangs and lunatics

I am that curve in the arrow of time 

The miniscule now, all of your yesterdays

And as space, I churn far across the aeons 

Burning pages of a book written without us 

Words

Again and again I fashion with mere words

Your paradise redrawn on my empty mind-map 

I tweak a word, try to sneak in a place 

In hopes that the map sinks them in somehow 

Your city, is oh-so-far-away now, and you 

Near to far and back, swinging wildly on whims 

When you are close, these words sound shrill 

when away, this distance, too loud for sound

Again and again, I draw up empty maps with 

Words, more words and all silences that fit 

In between unheard words which surely know

What's meant to be, will never come to be 

Dead Monitor Lizards

Male yellow orioles woo with a whistle 

A humming bird flits past a bamboo thicket 

Dead monitor lizard lies lazily on a bank

Beyond that bridge, forever, a bridge, 

We stand and watch clouds, stars, flowers

Scents, waves, houses that we could have had

One turtle too swims, in those waters unaware

As fiction faces feelings and flees unfettered 

Empty spoonfuls of flavors blend yet again 

On your windowsil, a coffee with my mother's

Hands, a mugful of your memories now in my hands

I eat my fill from your palm on my face

And hunger for more of what life could never 

Give again. 

Does a dead monitor lizard float or sink? 

Unloved

As if your name is a blessing that I seek again

My lips breathe it on an off-white, imperfect circle

Which doesn't pull the ocean as it should

Into waves of ecstasy and depths of despair 

Will we ever find our way through these mazes

Infinite possibilities of unending probabilities 

Or were we meant to walk forever towards 

Each other from the other side of the globe

And lost deep in each other's cell-phone worlds, 

miss an entire universe, unimagined, unlived

Silent

Love coloured my world with those dreams, 

Light pastel shades of silk-cotton kisses 

Lust-hued sweat running into clouded eyes

Life came running on the morning after 

With a hangover, a spade to bury yesterday 

And locked your name in a black box 

of multi-coloured memories. Only,

Pictures, they are all so silent. 

Your Gifts

I asked for glass bangles of your love 

To sing of nights that didn't want to end

For green sarees of jasmine stalks 

To wrap delicious memories of your eyes 

But you brought me gifts beyond the world

A sacred scent of rain meeting parched earth

And dark vermillion on our parted paths 

Memories

Your eyes, your skin, the way your lips carve out 

Life's most treasured gift, your words echoing

Silence of lifetimes lost and yet to come; these 

And more, I will steal again and again from this earth 

But tell me, how will I find my way back to the ground

From these clouds you had led me to?

Love, the most lonely of all words, comes and goes

Neither completes the slow-kill it is mandated to do

Nor bathes me in mists of moments I dreamed up

Lying there under the stars, holding your hand 

Minute after minute, pours hot coals of thwarted trust

Laughs at heavens' sacred stardust, my vermillion dusk

I ask for your hand to hold me through the mist 

But can memories bring me those rainbow ladders 

to step back from cotton clouds of mirth and misery? 

Someday

Somewhere along these mountains we climbed

We lost the "meta" in our meta-physical world 

Your touch moved Dante's sun, my entire planet

My breath draped on its clouds, warm winter mornings

In fingers that blended your skin into mine,

In lines that curve and slash a tiny bump 

Made only for me, right there on your heart,

I entered another meta-physical world 

Step into it someday

Come fall in love with me,

Someday

Missing Women

A thousand ships sailed one day

A million monkeys died on another

Because, you women, you were missed

A silent night launched a secret sigh 

One hundred moons cried in a deep blue sky

Because, you woman, you aren't missed

Who wrote those woman's stories

Such glories that lead men to war!

What gripped your love so hard

As to be clipped by silence overall?

And yet, 

Woman, who are you to ask of fate 

Why beauty dares yet to survive

And why does it not die 

When love fades and leaves us all?

Emptiness

All that's dark had entered 

my soul when 

I was born

you traced a charcoal heart

And then smoke trails 

of lives were burnt

in whimsical bonfires 

of some god's 

goddamned game; 

I held your hand 

all through my dreams

Far away meles, 

market places of wishes

Sailboats in windless 

Empty space

And woke up 

To an emptiness 

Your size 

I wish I knew

There on the banks of my ancient river, I knelt

And lit two lamps of your truth and mine

Gently swayed by tides of a reality beyond them 

They rocked together for the night

I wished I stayed on to know

When one died out, did the other go?

On those time-honoured steps I sat and watched 

Your sun rise in the east while my moon waited on

One dawn that brought them together on earthen banks

Held them both in eternity's fickle arms 

I wish I stayed on to know 

Were there other days when the moon kissed the sun?

I held on to sacred chants, ancient charms, temple domes, oil lamps, sandalwood scents of lost ages

Scooped aeons of faith in turmeric-stained rice 

Worshipped the goddess whose hunger fills my being

And Her god who is beyond the very idea of death

I wish I knew, was her God made of stone too?

  

Doubt & Hope

Twin peaks of infinite thirst 

moulded by ancient, forgotten gods;

Doubt and hope, keep watch on life

And like dawn and dusk,  

Relate neither to time nor space 

Millions of gods have been crushed 

When heavens churned and roads

leading up to those peaks perished 

Uncounted pennies have been minted 

One day's loot, just enough for the next

Treasures, pleasures, lives; gained

In the inner sanctum of one or the other 

At times one is lost in cloud shadows 

Of past lives and an unrepentant present

Or in mystic mountain sunsets. But always 

Doubt and hope, like thought and word

Remain as heavy paperweights do

Keeping together theunwritten pages of 

Life's pointless lengthy short tales 

Your story and mine, together or alone

Silence (V2)

Silence is a warm blanket on a sultry summer noon

Raising faint memories of a red-faced autumn moon

But at dawn when summer slips to her maiden home

On gushing jasmine wind and on oceans' night foam

I worship her in temple domes, trembling forest nooks

Chocolate twirls in coffee cups; yellowed pages of beloved books

Straddling bitter-sweet bridges of a random rendezvous, 

Silence is a busy old friend out on errands with you

Other days, her devious pits fall deeper than beyond 

Thunderstorms, crocodile farms, vestigial prickled bond 

Dark skinned despair, deep valleys, vampire-inn secrets 

Treacherous murderer of light, keeper of weakness 

And at times, a needle to darn old tears in lengthy evening shadows

Holding up daily deaths of a distant sun to see how that yarn flows

No forlorn maiden this silence, that kisses your perfumed breasts 

In her do all memories live, all wounds fill and all life rests  

Words

Words that spill, mere words that fill my world

Words can kill, mere words erase aeons crossed

My words, mere words, bundles of thwarted hopes

Your words, mere words, faces in clouds that passed

No kisses, no arms, no eyes fill this emptiness 

That was once filled by an open blue sky 

Now that we have nothing left to say

Words that once healed all of life's wounds

Haunt these spaces between my cells

Crushing each cell to unending tomorrows

Time

One afternoon of a ten-year old pair of eyes 

Was drenched in the rain of an unspoken hope

For an all too distant future, another afternoon

A grownup woman piggybacking on a grown up man

For reasons only hidden in their all too loud laughter 

That moment was reborn one day 

In an eighteen year old pair of eyes

Watching two middle-aged pairs of legs

Entwined and pointing the stars 

For reasons only hidden in their all too silent touch

Time dilates pupils, kisses, hopes, moments

And in the speed of memories, another's and mine

I am born again

For Donne's sake

For God's sake hold your tongue and let me love

Donne's words burnished into an unheard voice

Like bees humming an ancient universal song 

I heard it again and again, When you asked for meaning

This great blue sky and all mysteries that it holds

Today's daylight sacrificed at ritualistic dusk

Do they know if tomorrow will bring a new sun?

For god's sake, why not let me love?

You built an altar on buried behavioual truths

And prayed to other men's truth

I sought to worship those moments 

In which you felt mine 

If tomorrow never comes, your altar will remain

I burn at each dusk as the sacrificial flame

Knowing my moments will be lost in time

So, for god's sake, can you let me love?

Monsoon Storms

I fashioned your image

From mud banks of those

Rivers of unborn tears.

Worshipped you with my

Wishes and dreams of 

A past embedded in my 

Hopeful future.

Meanwhile,

What monsoon storms

Your imagined love 

Unleashed on my earth!

My mud god melted 

Tinder Tales

We traced lanes of kama's sugarcane field 

Smoke rose like gossip over broken desire

But our charred lips held no spark of fire 

We went looking for gods, where idols were sold 

Not a leaf stirred in that weather of wet despair 

But the valley was full of voices from nowhere

We cried out to love in words held and holed,

In miles of darkened ochre-female islands,

But no rains fell to soothe that searing silence

We wept on ruins of stories that were all but healed

Your scarlet wounds lept alive from my perfume

Carried across lifetimes of a deadly gloom

Swipe left, go on try on a few more of those nights, airports, daydreams of snowfalls and love bites 

Dear space between those unseen wounds, 

May you touch us once, just right?

 

A Woman's Longing

Some nights I am haunted by 

Draupadi's love for five, 

and on some others, 

By Kunti's passion to survive,

Ahalya's eyes closed in pleasure

Tara's dalliance with the moon

Other nights, I am Mandodari

Cursed to wed the cause 

Of great destruction of her clan

Tonight, I turn to you and ask

Was I never to receive,

That gift of longing 

Which Sita was bestowed

and thwarted for her love

of this very earth?

Your smile held answers 

like the cosmic egg; 

forever pregnant,

fecund with transience

bound to boundlessness

of eternity. Silence.

Stained Sorrows

Don't bring those sorrows to me and ask 

Whether I prefer them in shades of grey

Sorrows aren't ever black and white, 

Coloured as they are in purple bruises 

on tender skin of a newly born love,

And tinged in jaggery syrup of longing

Swirling hues of deathless desire. 

Come give me your wine glass 

And I'll show you

How to stain your sorrow. 

Damn you love, dear love, sweet hurt, 

neat pest, shaker of the ground beneath my feet

 When great fires burn, sunlight is born. 

Here, you burn and I light up. 

Sometimes, the other way round.

All words be damned. 

Damn you, dear love,

Come and Color my sorrow 

In your sunset hues 

Tangled Tales

What tangled tales these words weave

With your cotton eyes and dyes of dusk

Sunsets, moonlight, bangled hands, 

And centuries of wait for another moment 

To arrive 

What tangled tales these words weave

With your purple dreams and silks of skin

Memories, wishes, unthinking kisses,

And wistful songs that last all night for you 

Who are gone 

Words cross those skies sometimes at night

And lay down beside those lakes on mars

They ask me if my pages will fill

All of the Blue-god's emptiness within

Words burn with fires from afar, 

Neither light, nor ashes, no space, nor traces

Of someone who had brought down my world

From faraway stars into unending lines

And when silence comes, 

it dies; Many deaths 

as I weave tangled tales 

Of a joy that lived once 

Momentariness

A moment stretched its leisurely arms 

When Jupiter rained on Canterbury road

Eyes held and caressed through

Collective noses; lips glued to

Shoulders; legs entwined, burrowed 

In a red cave of evanescence 

Tall dark shadows of trees swayed 

In the sheer bliss of framing that night sky

For two wanderers on a looped path 

No longer lonesome, nevermore alone

In an unlit road that lead nowhere 

Buddha smiled into frugal transience 

We kissed that night goodbye but then 

a star sprinkled its mirthful disappearance 

And your smile brought him back again

And again and again surging into my veins 

Who will unwrite these lines you were made of

And lead our song to its epehemeral blue sky?

 

Fated to Drift

Fate of flowers, rivers, fire and earth

To die, if not today, tomorrow. Alone

 

Fate of plants, clouds, bees and stars

To seek new love before time runs away

Among these clouds and stars, 

I flow like a forsaken garland of flowers

Seeking to find that one moment, 

That space and those hands which made me

While all along, this current drifts me

Away and into a relentless roar of the ocean 

Here and Now

For that space between your pillow and mine,

And your head in the crook of my arm

For those dream weddings with green sarees

And the burning sun of memory laden vermillion

Those walks, those parts of your heart

You left with mine under the stars, 

For morsels that will fill a thousand births to come

Tears and songs, for skin, for lips, for hands and feet

For each of these, I can thank you tomorrow 

But this deathless life that you leave me with

Here and now, peerless prince, I bow to you 

Kill Joy

I heard stories of  black holes born from stars

And of nothingness dying into a million suns 

Of creatures in dream-state mirrors of unheard truth

Far below the ocean's depths, 

I know they are stars too

I close my eyes at night in your arms

And wake up to beauty and joy that can kill

Never Enough

Never enough, all of the blue sky 

With its zillions of light ampules 

And an evening holding your hand

Will hunger ever die and leave me alone

While alive, I will crave again and again

For another night, that is never to be 

Never enough, those moonlit evenings

Monsoon kisses, your feet on mine 

And an afternoon spent on clouds 

Will my eyes ever stop seeking your smell

Among all the voices I will hear while alive

For three words, that were never meant to be

Krishna, Do You Know Her At All?

Among your thousand loves, you danced

On full moon nights in secret groves 

One knew not that there was another

Krishna, did you give her your all?

Her sleeping life, children and home

Sandbanks, timerafts, rivers of loss

She crossed drawn in by a playful flute 

Krishna, did you play on her will?

She talked of delight and dreamt of dungeons

To stay was death, to leave, even worse

Her whole being burned in hell-fires of trust

Krishna, did you touch her ashes at all? 

Lack of Love

This crazy fuck means nothing 

But then, I am a crazy fuck too 

And two crazy fucked up lives 

Can they make up for a lack of love?

These rootless words mean nothing 

But words are dreams to hold on to

All these rootless, wordless, endless dreams

Can they make up for lack of love? 

Love that we spoke of, had no love

Tainted bedspreads, bottled water 

Windowsills of leisure, 

rolling arms of pleasure 

No love, not love, what love?

Whose lack of love can make up

For all this talk of love without love?

Happiness in curved mirrors

Happiness poked its knees into my stomach 

And held me tight lest my nights run amok

Somewhere among unweary sweeps, rife

We held hands and watched stars come to life

There were days before you, spent on desert sands

Fire and fear; lament that no one understands 

This rush of blood in my veins for you; 

churning karmic wheels of cause askew

Who brought you here straight from tinder realms

On a magic carpet of our shattered dreams?

Life is a count of breaths, can we trust its errors;

And come to be unmade into its curved mirrors?

That moon received her blessings in shades of blue

Your upsidedown image is but I, my magnificent self; you.

How The Moon Lives

History is a cheat, you know that well

He hides those stories of your genes that sing

And makes mountains of men who did massacres 

You, a poet, whose words paint unneeded love

What use you are to those who see 

With twin eyes of wins and losses?

Geography; She doesn't mean to, but she lies

One day's contours on a map, meant to live 

For as long as memory and not a day more

You, a sailor whose maps are drawn from the stars

What use you are to those who use 

Quarter books to define boundaries of islands?

Footprints of false histories all through your maps 

If you care to know,that lonesome moon was lost 

And ever since she came under the spell 

Of a spinning globe weaving ancient tales

She stayed on for the wedding feast and learnt 

How to marry words with lost maps and live