The funny shape ...

These trees have an aura of innocence in them;

they are like the pregnancy between 

the earth and the heaven,

standing tall and silent

in anticipation

promising birth.

We played around those trees,

my childhood friend and I;

innocent giggles resonated along the slight breeze

and then our tiny hands firm and strong 

around the shovel

we lifted it high and brought it down firm

on the tiny blue head of a snake

that had slithered out of a nearby hole.

The dull thud sound resonated as well.

Its head, smashed and artistically pasted midst the tree roots,

made a funny shape.

We giggled even more.

A poem for tea cup and Sunday morning ---

For Shabnam Das Manna ...

Your little china tea cup

warmed by steam,

the honey colored swirl

churning out all over again those

 long tucked-away dripping dreams;

you hold it as if

both of you are plotting something secret

your tea-colored eyes

steaming with memories

both fresh and distant

and a few rainy day stories of the past

sitting in front of you on their hunches.

Then the morning

kisses your cheek

like a lover you have known

like a river tickling a pure night

 carries you

to a town

where trees still grow tall in the river bank

away from the newspaper and the car-honks

your tea-leaf eye-lids brimming  up

with a childlike joy

that you have known

but have forgotten lately

and then you are not 30 yet,

so you smile and giggle and

 hope that the world understands your language!

  

Almost Love...

 365 days and a few nights later

I am trying to taste the familiar warmth

and hear the forgotten footfalls

that has become silent like both of us.

We have kept veracity and a few smiles

In a curtain box

planning to take it with us

later

someday, sometime,

when the callings of life will be completed.

Till then we will postpone love.

Now sleep is lonely and famished

as dreams have deserted the eyes and

both of us imagine

a future love
waiting
today...
the day after...
and a day after... 

and this explicitly is the loss of love!

Shall we pretend? ...

Let’s pretend 
that someday I will run to pick up those flowers
that nestled in the dust
even before the monsoon rain would touch them.
Let’s pretend
that I know magic
that I can fly
and I can talk to a frog
and the chair is a ship.
Let’s pretend
hidden beneath the memories
and lost between the leaves
someday
I would be able to
sleep peacefully;
And let’s pretend
a river will stream through my room
and my room will become a garden!

Sometimes ...

Sometimes 

the lump of a grief

that was stuck in your throat for long
will help you compose a poem;
the lines will come out like a dancing butterfly
words will descend from everywhere,
from the right and the left, this way and that way,
upright, with head held high
like a fresh bout of summer rain and
will melt your sorrow
drop by drop
silently, peacefully,
without a movement, no stir
no wrinkle, nor a stain!
And there will be
just those remnants of a season gone by
like the lingering wetness of some past tears.

Slowly, eventually

The azure sky will promise an equal light,
no beginning, no end, but
an equal music, and
only then you will reach a spotless holy
Freedom!

I am ...

Dear One, you are so weary!

There are creases on your otherwise firm eyebrows.

Come, gaze into my eyes

I might be the woman you want to look at.

But dear One, wait! Before you think

I am the woman with whom you want to be, and

before you want to drown yourself

into the depth of my eyes,

Realize, I am no metaphor, nor a muse,

neither a promise;

Look at my hands, a bit soiled and

 the tired lines below my eyes;

find the bruises and the blisters on my feet,

my smile, inside which you want to hide your trouble

 is not a poem, not a sonnet

but a courage that tells the world to bring on the grunge!

I might be the woman you want to touch

dear One,

but understand, I am neither a prize nor a grub,

not even an apology, not your excuse;

recognize that you make love to the

skin and bones that might have dirt on it. 

You make love to hair, nerves, veins, sweat and tears.

If I am who you wish to love, dear One,

Let me be human just as you,

share my best and the worst

take every single line of my sunshine and my eclipse

Let me create a universe for myself, for you, for all

Let me build the world as I wish to.

Don’t forget that

I am born to create, to build.

And then, 

if the walls crush down

or the sky grumbles, hold my hand

I promise I will never let go!

E-mails ...

And she thought she won’t be able to live without you!

But strange is this thing habit!

Now she has this ashtray full of burnt words

that she uses in her mails

in her poems.

By now

She has made love to emoticons far too many times

She has fallen in love with them far too often!

Now instead of lying her head against your chest

She writes metaphors,

sends letters into the space

Earlier, she thought she has lost you

and she got scared out of her wits! 

So quickly

mindlessly

 she was trying to hide you

among those rhyming images,

which is almost the same

For isn't hiding about losing

from the vision?

Hope she realizes soon

that all she is left with

are her poems and those smileys

the horoscope of her tousled yearning …

 

When nobody else is home, hold my hand …

When nobody else is home, hold my hand …                                   
 And it all started that way

in secret

inside the dark

when no one was around

when no one could see.

Those beautiful promises,

that deep ‘forever’ tone

all, away from the world’s eye

and no one should know.

A rare bond of love,

Strong as the morning Sunrise

but to be hidden as a nasty family secret;

A relation vibrant as rainbow

but like those kitchen cockroaches

that hide in every nook and corner of the drawer and the drain

and scurry out powerfully in the darkness of the night.

We collected each other’s shoulders, knees, palms, eyelashes;

In those fleeting moments

we collected them and tried to build an orchid

in which we tried to grow in,

molding each other, like an ivy wrapping

but there was no Sun-ray, it was already the dusk; 

 so, we could never fit in like that unsolved jigsaw .

 And people say love is beautiful. It is divine. It's the truth!

Strange!             

                                                                                                                                                       

Moon ...

Full moon,
At lonely night
When autumn cry
I will climb up to you
To kiss
Or not kiss
May be just to hold
Or laugh by
Or listen you talk
And then at a deep summer night
I am searching for you again
While crossing the field
I will stop by
A while
Looking for you
Across the way
Round the next corner
Between the mind and the voice
You remain
Minutes of moments come and gone
But the dream is forever the way it was!

For one who died last night …

I think I know how you felt
at that time.
Wasn’t it a pale green hallway,
where windows offer no reflection
and the door doesn’t promise life beyond?

I think I know it all.

looking at the photo of a dead stranger

I feel I have known it all.

You could not chase
the elephant away,
It was probably eavesdropping.

but pretending might have had helped for a while

 until you remembered

 that elephant has big ears.

Until you were married,
you never bothered about the plural space. And then
the birds in the binoculars settled in a cage.

You got your marriage certificate photocopied.
The marriage became a metropolis –
you and him its anonymous citizens.

After you left
for the land where no one dances in the rain,

He must have found worlds

full of memories

long after you’ve lost it.

You lie in bed,

A strange sickness in your bones

pinning you

eyelid to toe nail.

As I share a heartbroken

cup of coffee with the man I have fallen in love with

holding hands yet realizing the ocean
between us,

I feel I have known what you felt then.

I sent you all my prayers,

you returned half,
attaching a note:  You need these too.

He asks if I need to be held.

 I am not sure. Not anymore.

If comfort is disloyal

can a roomful of grief

ever have happiness?

I know how you felt at that point of time.

Like I often do,

You too must have stepped out of yourself

and wanted to observe her,

She,

Who has perpetually walked,

casting and recasting herself

to be with people, who

had accepted and rejected her

at convenience,

As you sang with her

cried with her

standing there, observing,

It became too late stepping back into yourself again!

And I sit still

by the side of the television news

looking at your dead photograph

I more dead than you

I think I have known how you felt.

Tit for Tat ...

The arrest of Devyani Khobragade claims that she had lied on a visa form for her domestic help. She was handcuffed, strip searched, kept in a cell as per the US law that is same against anyone violating the law. And this indeed is such a grave issue of national concern, obviously much more than the poverty, corruption or environmental decay of our country, that it led to a stressful relationship between India and US hitting an all-time row. India has time and again shown how they provide special respectable treatments to criminals of well known, famous connections. How often these suspected criminals get easy bail for the most heinous crime just because someone is a film star or someone’s father has solid political connection. They even get mutton biriyani served in the jail. If India can treat suspected criminals in this manner, why should the US not? Is it not the land of the free? 

 Immediately after Khobragade’s arrest, in a show of unrestrained bravado and patriotism security barriers outside the US embassy in New Delhi were removed. Tit for Tat, wow! The best way to teach a lesson for harassing one of our corrupt officials! That indeed is called National Love! All the political parties and opinion leaders came all out to protect India’s “prestige” and “dignity”! Bravo! There have been placards saying “Long Live Devyani”!In another justified development, when a US diplomat lost his way in Delhi fog and mistakenly overtook Robert Vadra’s convoy (how dare he? Doesn't he know that RV is the country’s most important son-in-law??!!)  – he was promptly strip searched and made to spend the night outside the police station in freezing cold. He is now recuperating from pneumonia. So rightly served! 

And of course the political leaders in an extremely righteous manner refused to meet the American congressional delegation visiting Delhi. After all, we need to keep up our Indian maturity and self-esteem! This indeed is exactly THE way to show that after all India IS powerful and so what if cases like NIRBHAYA, DOWRY, BRIDE BURNING are still rampant, we Indians know how to show our fangs when it is needed! 

And I think, from now on we all should start feeding all our spicy chilli paneer, masala pizza, korma and makhani to all those American expatriates. And the govt also should serve only Andhra mirchi bhajjis to the US embassy. That would really teach them how we Indians can save our “respect”. 

We all participate in joining hands against the illogical demands that the domestic staff in our diplomats’ homes should be paid according to standards. It’s time we educate the world that not all people should be equal and we should never allow anyone to break down the class or caste system that we so proudly bear in our country. Remember, your support is not just for Khobragade or Indian diplomats but it is for all of us! If diplomats are not allowed to forge visa papers and official documents, what will happen to us common men?! This undeniably is a fight for our rights, to kink the law! So what if Sangeeta, the domestic help, is equally an Indian as Khobragade? After all, domestic helps are “servants” and how come the world isn't aware of this? How ridiculous? So what if we have hit 2014, servants cannot have the same feelings, dreams, and legitimate rights like the diplomats!

 This definitely is the right kind of concern for the otherwise timid Indian Government to make it a “prestige issue” and to show an unexpected courage for not being brow beaten by the US anymore! Bravo!

Having said this, I must admit that there is always another side of the story and most often there is so much more than what the mere eyes see! A close friend of mine has told me the following. He is not an Indian and is born and brought up in the US. I saw some sense in what he said. So let me post his perspective as well ... He said -----
"Strip search is not for anyone violating the law …it comes only in complicated cases where the law clearly states “there must be a reasonable suspicion that the detainees is in possession of weapons or other contraband " before a strip search can be conducted. Statesmanship,diplomacy, international affairs are not always and entirely based on ethics as a diplomat, you are representing a whole nation; what Devyani did could be despicable, but what was done to her ( if it is true to the extent it was exposed on Media or accused by Indian government) is highly deplorable and if it was done to any US official by any other government, that could even lead to a III world war. I really wonder why some of the Indians (mostly those who migrated to the US and those who win the bread here) blindly swallow the "law of the land" nonsense. In Raymond Allan Davies case (a diplomat who was arrested for double murder in Pakistan, not long ago); the same US government was all out for "diplomatic immunity". Even a frisk search of a diplomat is considered highly unpardonable. Devyani was not convicted, not suspected to be carrying any contraband or arms. There is much more than what meets the eye in this case and whatever retaliatory steps India government did was justifiable. I wish other nations had also grown some spine!"

Untitled ...

She writes poetry in the middle of the night

hair undone

eyes fixed at the golden moon.

When everyone is asleep

She bakes and eats the pulpy sadness

She is a witch

Or perhaps a lunatic.

But her soul is still a virgin.

Its soft petal skin

as old as the primordial thought;

Its every breath is a new hymen pattern.

Looking for peace

It grows wings

and transforms into a butterfly.

It takes a roll call of

all tall promises and smiles.

And its sadness is like a white hibiscus

resting on a garden fence.

Do you remember the gold fish

that used to swim in her heart

before it turned into melted ice? ...