Stray thoughts ...

Independence Day – I would like to know about it; I mean more than its history I would like to know more about its relevance and significance today! What is Independence? Is it that tri-colour cloth fluttering high at the traffic signal near my house? Or is it those patriotic songs that are going on since early dawn in the by lane? Or maybe it is the usual glory of the parade show and those national awards – which nobody will remember or care who won what even one day after the announcements. Every year when it comes around, I look for a reason to celebrate. Every time, it’s more and more difficult to find one. This time I was only thinking of Nirbhaya, the fearless one, my dearest younger sister – I wanted to reach out to you, I wanted to find out where you are, now. The more I thought of you I was getting so sure that you are the wind beneath our wings and you will surely never die. The poison that you have taken little sister, we all have experienced that in some measure or the other. And it controls our lives. So where is our Independence? We are elephants now – who never forget … we could never forget! 

( Shaista in her blog Lupus In Flight mentioned us being elephants. )

Did you notice 'soil' carefully? To me it looks like a huge antique trunk; with bruises and scratches here and there, its hinges rusted and stained.Footfalls of history are stored in it. River beds are neatly piled in the corners; also minerals, nitrogen and phosphorous are carelessly kept here and there. On top of everything you will find a handful of sobs and sighs with a distant echo of a long lost laughter. There is also a huge colorful garden in it. All these are stacked inside the trunk for years together. And you can also keep dead bodies in it. Many of them!

How do you escape your anguish? 

Do you spread it thin like butter on bread
and keep waiting that someday it would soothe away the sting?
Or do you fling it like a chit of a sun ray under your half willing lover’s door
and keep hoping that it would churn out a rainbow sometime?
I bury them among my half-baked dreams
and in between those half-finished poems.
Among those hidden alleys of rhyme and metaphor
I scream soundlessly
or unleash a ferocious maddening stream.
Do you want to know how to escape grief?

desire

The dreaming desires of life
I am looking for you again
after very many years
in the same old places;
and I have found you
... same old desires of life,
life’s dancing delight,
dancing around
a day
a night
like a butterfly
my indigo blue butterfly
flutter by
float and fly ….

And then
I let go of you
like the sand off my fist
like the stars in the dawn
like a dream in the morning wakefulness
I let go of you.