Time

Time stands like a stranger  ,

In a calendar,

With the dates arranged 

like the stiff collar of the shirt,

Giving me shivers,

With its stern undertones of a deadline.

 My eyes wander

beyond the frames,

For the count of time.

Only to find them
In the tales of yesterdays,
And in the expectations of a tomorrow.

Somewhere down the line,
They break  into moments,

Elongating into unending sagas,
Silencing the ticking soldier,

Parading around the future.

I do not know where I belong,
 l forget the borders of my existence,
Only to feel my breath 
Diffuse into the air,
Nowhere to be found!

Glimpses of a strange vision haunts me, 

No more of  yesterdays and tomorrows.

nothing remains but an eternal moment

freed from the bondage of time,
 merging  into the ocean of the universe.

Being safe

Her eyes,
Sponged the dreams,
Colours ,vibrant and alive,
Her tiny legs ,
Barely touched the ground,
Flitting around the garden,
As her wonderland
Sprouted in her winged mind.

The call seemed to be for her,
But she flowed
With the wind.
Who has the time
To reply?
There! the cloud had melted
Into an icy lake.

The call persisisted,
And some one stepped out
Of the dull,
Dreamless home.
With a smile playing on his lips,
Her uncle moved on
To her.
She ran to him,
To show the spread of the icy lake
He hissed into her ear,
"Get in, dear!
Or the beggars
Might as well bundle you
In their bags.
Have you seen their hideous faces?
Be r..eally.. careful.
Or you would be
Walking in rags
And a begging bowl."

The gates creaked open,
And an old figure in rags
Hobbled into the courtyard.
Terror stricken she rushed
Into the house,
Into the room...
And on to the bed...
She leaped,
Covering her face.

The ghostly undone walls kept gaping at her,

Bricks peeping out of the scraped paint

All the dull dreariness secured within it's
Fold, 

She sat huddled on the bed

All alone wanting these walls

To shut her safe
From the hideous beggar.
The dreadful tales gripped her mind,
As she saw herself in rags and a bowl.
She moved further into the corner
And the walls moved in
Prisoned her in,
Blinded her vision
Tarnished her dreams dull
Scraping off the colours of her imagination.

A River's Lament

Our childhood summer holidays

unquestionably ended in the folds 

Of the warm golden sand,

Laced by the dark meandering river.

Our hearts tugged out of it's ties

To see the glorious sun 

Melt into the stretches of sand 

Spreading to an unseen horizon.

Plunging down into the sandy ripples

Our hands busy , moulding,digging, reshaping,

creating a world around us,

Only to be crumbled  in no time.

Finally to blissfully glide 
into the warm currents,
surrendering to the nudging drifts,
of the playful river.

The river still flows by my village, like a widow.
In vain do I search,for a strip of sand.
The sandy banks nowhere to be found,
Probably martyred in the name of development.

Nevertheless, with a semblance of tranquility,
The river moves on,
drenched in the mire of agony.
Oh! Had we the eyes to see her desolation!

Freedom

What rules draw limit to the mind?

Mind that transcends entity, life, death......

You never know which world it loves to delve in.

I have a world lit in me,
 Moulded, reshaped by the  the anvil,

But not yet dissipated.

The dull mundane routines have not yet tied my mind.

That sets my freedom.

Being in love

 

 Those dreamy eyes unfasten,

 An air of warmth into my nights.

 Your arms blanket me into a world of their own,

Making me sink into your heartbeats,

And erase my unwanted memories.

 Love is strange,

And how it gets into your veins,

Is even more ridiculous.

The grass looks greener,

the days are brighter,

and a smile plays on your lips,

making you wonder at your happiness.

The Path

Tall trees,
shooting up to the skies
tunnelled into a path.
Ferns unfurled a wet scent,
into the air,
little tree plants bloom into
tiny yellow petals.
Like green grasshoppers capering
around wild blades of grass
with white ricey flowers
I trampolined.

The wind plucked a note in the areca palms,
to reverberate a thrill
into the darkening patches.
The withered leaves rustled
a breath of protest
as I walked upon them
to reach my destination.

Green mossy walls denied
trespassers to stray upon
untrodden mucky stretches.
Some squatting frogs
with bulging eyes,
stared at me.
Slow careful steps
to plod across
the croaker.

At a turn
the light of the sun
danced upon the huge banyan,
braiding its root into
the earth.
The leaves sieved the light,
and the splendour of the sun,
broke into a golden sparkle,
blinding me with a radiance
I stayed long,
breathing into the halo.
Now I walk with a veil of light,
around my eyes

Maths and fear

The moment he entered the class,
I could feel something creeping down my spine.
As he moved between the benches,
Checking each of our notes,
There was a revolt
That would rise constantly,
From the pit of my stomach.
A deafening darkness
Fell into my eyes,
As I tried to concentrate,
And listen to what he was explaining,
But all I could hear,
Were the echoes of my heart
Rebounding in my ears.
I would cringe
As he moved closer,
To snatch my notebook.
No prayers made the sums easier,

My pages were smudged, erased and dirty,
But never correct.
He taught us maths,
I learned fear,
Fear of being ridiculed,

Of laying bare my ignorance.

Mourning

The air was thick, 

heavy and clouded with uncertainty.

We all huddled in the house uneasily,
Waiting for the rituals to be completed,

Unsettled and lost,

Because the lady of the house,

Lay in a white shroud, cold and frigid.

An expression of peace had settled on her 

face ,

For today all her children were near her,
the way she always wanted.

Today, it was her turn,

to disappear from our eyes,

the way we used to,

as she looked on.

People streamed into the house,
Whispering ,afraid to scatter the silence,
Paying their homage,
Sympathizing at our loss.

Grandpa though was in a frenzy,

Running around the house,
Making arrangements,
Calling out for needs,

Bursting out at the lack of response,
Scolding others for their inaction.

Dad buried in grief,
Looked at his mother,
Asked grandpa to sit a while.
He stared and replied,
“Sitting doesn’t make things happen.”

And he was back,
frantically, settling everything right.

All had been set.

It was time to take her,
For once, grandpa sat beside her,
His eyes searching all about her,
As he ran his hands all over her ,
As if to be assured for one last time,
That she would not heed to his calls anymore,
No more angry retorts,
No more of disagreements.
A low whimpering rose from him
as he buckled down to the grief.

Grandpa

We the zestful, effervescent, unruly creatures,

Exploded into the quietness of our ancestral home,

With our hands on everything we could get onto,

We were not the angels you could dream of,

Maybe you could call us, pixies.

The magic that worked on us,
 Was our grandpa’s wand.

Our guardian angel was a little different though.

His features were all sharp and well defined,

Like the rules that he had set for the house.

His thin shrivelled hands,

Chiselled face, high brows

Oh those cheekbones!!!!

Even his eyes could pierce us through.

God had left no soft corners in his profile,

Yet his smile could melt icebergs,

And burn a sparkle in his eyes,

Lighting the whole world around him.

His diary, his newspaper, his accounts,

Everything had its time and place in his life.

No matter what, everything happened on time,

And in the right way.

But he would let us disappear into the wilderness around,

To wander, to explore, to discover, to learn,

To be on our own.
We would invade the jungles of our imagination,
Run wild, as we tried to conquer the tallest trees,
set out as soldiers on a secret mission,
unraveling mysteries,
fall and stumble upon  unseen corners.
And in our excitement, start to overlook our old man's rules,
assuming us to be a little beyond his reach.

Only to realize that he could maneuver all around the house,

And that slow walker,

Could change his pace any time,

To bring us right back into his line of discipline.

His care was strange, expressed in his firm rules,
  stranger, his love,
 oscillating between his retributions,
and  his endearing kisses  breathed on our foreheads.

Redefining Bravery

Sometimes you need not lift mountains,

Or fight huge battles,

for being brave.

To find a dead rat in your lawn in the most ghastly fashion,

And to bury that,

Does take some amount of courage.

 Well I can call myself brave!!!

Living in the grey

Living in the area of greyness,

We rarely find,

The darkest black or the purest white,

To be the background of the sprinkled gold.

Once in a while, we look up,

To find the whiteness of the clouds,

Floating across the pool of blue.

We wonder at the dancing network of light

playing the patterns of life,

With its tangled nervous system.

And  lose ourselves in the puffed up clouds that melt to form a rainbow.

Suddenly be aware of thoughts that remain stacked one upon other,

Like those tissue papers arranged in the stack, 

used to wipe off dirt,

And then, to be thrown away.

We hurry off,  

 Move on fretting about an unsettled issue.

Walking Under The shades of green

The greens form irregular patterns over the road,

The bright yellow illuminations break all frontiers,

Fade the impression of the greens.

Somewhere between the appearance and the disappearance,

The impressions slide into an apparent invisibility,

Reduced to an awkward grey, they skulk in corners.

Suddenly, they shoot up,

Then it simply disappears.

Or does it? 

The  impressions breath in the illuminations and die in it.

Fading and appearing,

Never disappearing,

How am I to define you?

The lonely island

I am an island,

surrounded by the ocean,
That walls me out of the rest of the world.

The waves continuously creep into my shores,

Slowly and steadily,

Eating my shores away and taking my sands off into its bed.

Every day I change my facade as the ocean continuously breaks my frontiers.

There are times when  the ocean brews a storm beyond the horizon,

And it marches on with steady steps to trample my terrain mercilessly.

And I watch helplessly as it wrecks havoc,

riding wildly across me.                                                                                                                                        
 Every day, I lose my battle,

For I do not know what else to do.

I give away little by little,

And take all the hues, all the blues , with me.

Sometimes I wonder what am I, 

The island or the ocean?

I do not know where one ends, and where the other begins.

And yet what you see is just the lonely little island,
 So pleasant, warm and sunny.

For you do not know what storms  pass through me

And the battle  I lose, day by day.

One day, even before you realize,

All that would be left would be just the huge ocean.

You would be left to wonder,

Was there not an island out there in the middle of the ocean,

lonely and apart?

It

It’s a new beginning,

I do not know how many more faltered steps my legs would take,

As it measures the paths to be treaded on.

I sit here with a burdened heart,

Not yet ready to be free of the clutches of the insecurities of a tomorrow.

My eyes found the vast sky,

dark and still,

looming large above me,

 Encompassing my soul,

 Strangely housed in by my body.

Nights with my grandma

There is a small village,

And a home  that sprawls across the wilderness,
Unknown to the world.

THAT is my ancestral home.

The light that breaks darkness

Barely reached the corners,

And the windows could seal off light!

Nights were the darkest there.

THERE, my grandma treaded with soft steps,

Spreading the warmth of her affection.

Every night I would fondly run into her room,

Dimly lit by a small lamp.

 I jumped into her bed, demanding a story.

Her warmth filled the room,

As she embraced me 

And took me into the world of folklore, myths and epics,

Feeding my young mind with colours and dreams.

All so beautifully woven,

In the dark canvas of my grandma’s room.