Failure

It was nice as long as we were sipping the coffee,
its warmth flowing down our throat like molten honey,
the taste of your quickened heartbeat and the 
slow vapor from the coffee cups
were becoming the wet softness on my cheek as
we were hoping for a day in the future.
But when that day comes we had already spilled the coffee and those caustic words
making an ugly stain on the white table cloth.

The Sketch

It's old fashioned to use paper and pencil, they say!
But, the early quiver of charcoal-grey line,
the smudge of an alley,
the murmuring whispering rustle of the ferrule and the tip,
the slow line that bursts into sudden laughter,
and a white page creating memories of happiness

make the Timesroman12font appear infertile.

Generation Gap

The fresh scar on my mom’s newly replaced knee
is a shadow of a forgotten pain.
But the utter fear in her eyes
of losing her man, someday soon,
is growing roots and branching,
making me wish,
just once, I was as frightened;
 I could love as intensely,
beyond ego,
beyond pride,
at least once!

For the coffee that never happened!

So many things are not visible.

 

There’s a tunnel below the river.

A gesture lost inside the saree.

That regret below those eyelashes.

The breeze that tiptoes through the creek of a window.

 

Beyond the present, another day, yet another one.

 

And my half-baked dreams,

And the story that lie beneath our coffee cup that never got brewed!

 

That untold confession.

 

So many things are invisible, yet remain.

 

Not a poem ...

Living Alone
is knowing things as they are.


Living alone
is believing
the one who brought me here
will someday call me back.


Living alone is
realising that
things need not have an ulterior motive.


Living alone
is gliding through rooms after rooms
looking at the black shadow on the wall
where once the painting had been.


Living Alone
is breathing free
recovering
after years of subletting.

Words and only Words

Those broken-winged words are crying again!

I can’t tolerate these nagging sobbing sounds. I plan to shut them out.

those hissing serpentine vibrations get muffled as I close my door.

But I can still hear them outside. They all have gathered below the staircase.

I can’t even get angry with them, for I understand their plight.

These words, they tell me their stories. The other day, one of them
 was hurled against the wall along with the coffee mug

whose stain is still like a modern art against the whitewash.

These words, they have fearful stories to narrate.

Some are terrified of the angry lover who abuses his beloved.

Another escapes when the drunk husband throttles his wife.

Sometimes they are thrown carelessly on the doorstep

 by a son who is fed up with his old mother’s illness.

Those from the little lad who hasn't been comfortable with the neighbor-uncle's groping hand,

yet no one pays heed, sob the strongest.

The words that have come from the strangers are still consolable,

as they understand that one can’t expect too much from unknown people.

These words, they come to me in the middle of the night and cry.

They don’t understand that I need sleep

 to get up tomorrow, to go to work, to smile meaninglessly.

I creak open the door to see if they are gone, and

they all climb up to my feet                                                

Words after Words

Some like a woolen ball

Some like a wrap,

One after the other,

all those talk

and conversations,

Piles of them, hoards of them. They all come to me.

A few lines for/of Hyderabad

Togetherness...

We went out to see tiger, deer and peacock in the forest.

You had waited for a long time for this day.

Among the abundance of nature and the swinging car ride

and the sparkling excitement of your young eyes,

Hyderabad is an enigma with its rocky exuberance.

Even the orange colored trees lined up to go to the

water that fell into the dam. We were happy.

He kept complaining about

his office

about India

about the traffic.

We learnt:

His office is bad

Life is bad

Traffic is bad.

I kept nodding affirmative, you fell silent.

The sun became rude and the ride bumpy!

We came back

and he complained about

not seeing tiger, deer and peacock

and we learnt: forests are bad.

Later you and I discussed the deer in our chests

It makes noise

And lying on bed we heard it clearly!

…………………….

City and I ...

Dearest City, you and I

had been busy with other things

involved in the urgency of our work, but

now, away from your touch

my eyes long to see the Imli tree

under which I had buried a fistful of my

loneliness and a slice of my secret joy.

Dearest City, you hold the word ‘home’ for me,

the home that I carry like a liquid in my eyes.

So, would you accept my desperation

to put my memory in your time?

…………………….

Words about you ...

What if the paper flies away from under the words?

Words that dance in your roads, lanes and by-lanes

and sit and watch the flip-flop of the water of Hussain Sagar, and

the Buddha standing tall in the centre, already captured in my tattoo;

words that sleep and play among the folds of history, tucking the zari bordered sarees of the queens from across

the light and sound of Golconda Fort,

and words who often tend to hide behind the layers of the rusty Charminar !

Fearing if someday the paper decides to escape from under these words,

I have put a heavy paper-weight on its chest, in the centre.

Now the paper can’t escape. It can’t move. Because

It doesn’t breathe anymore.

……………….

Identity...

City, you are I, and I am you.

My forehead is your courtyard where the pigeons

eat the scattered grains every morning.

Your summer and your winter

are my ear rings.

My pierced earlobes are the

nails on your walls that developed a crack

because of the hammering.

My varicose-vein legs are

your trees that fell in the storm and

lay like unclaimed dead bodies.

Both of us contain mud, clay and

throbbing life in our bodies.

City, you are I, and I am you.

…………………………..