A poet's diary

1

How bodies vanish from eyes

It took a life’s source from a body because this body neededwind. A body is full of water flow like light in the temple of Godwho stared us in saucer eyes.

My source body went in light as it bathed in a water of power ,ahydro-electric thing in body reaching into an inwardness of motherearth, a way bodies vanish from eyes.

2

How to be dust

Here we sit before the body in this room’s corner ,crumblinginto its first dust with leaves of dust alive in its mouth.

This is our memento mori ,our dress rehearsal for our own return todust . Our first object lesson on how to be an object before wereturn to dust.

We are waiting for this body’s dusty daughter to reach this roomcorner. Before we get down to its dusty business .

The cow dust is returning home .This is our memento mori, ourlesson on how to turn dust at twilight.

3

Garden

Garden is a wood tree standing erect as if it was alive andpretending life,hosting evening birds chatting away with slum kidsplaying street cricket.

Garden is a fragrance remembered,soft grass crawling with slowsnail, birds singing of changing the world while I was at thecomputer trying to change it before the cuckoo did.

Fence is a running shadow of bush,hiding controvertinggarden lizard that had agreed with your nothing as itvigorously waved vertical head to every polemic from yourpoetry.

The spider is your world’s wide web that collected season’s rainpearls sparkling for proud sun moments but gone when youreturned from an olfactory inspection of jasmines.

Garden is mama reading in a swing from life’s pages thatwould be ice, a fire’s ashes and a river’s waters, a death’sfragrance remembered.

4

Dealing with cuckoos

We are old and puffed up with silences. We do not want tohang for others money .Let us be .We are used to long silencesand we hang in on our higher language and sardonic laughter,not quite caught.

So, do we see a jerk in the driver of awe ,a body with respect ineyes for the old? No, just money-hunger of a few more rupees, froma body that carries other bodies, a face not quite distinct, possible ofpuff with oldness , when once out of splutter.Knees shall laugh indue course of wobble.

We are old ,not quite liking to be called aunt by an aunt instreet with a cuckoo in throat calling out , you gone for a walkrecently? Yes, of course, our knees do not wobble yet. But weshall have our cuckoos soon.

5

Frames

In a wayside fruit stall , where we were supposed to buy Shimlaapples we managed to get two apple-cheeked girls in ourframes . We would get two cars parked there and some fruitson display in our frames .

There were no Shimla apples in March. There would be in lateOctober, by when the branches now black and shrivelled up, willturn green and laden with apples as beautiful as the girls cheeks.

What we got in our frame was beautiful . Now there are three applecheeked girls and are in conversation. Fruitful conversations indeed!I get them in a frame sharing the space with other fruits . Therewere oranges ,peaches etc from other spaces, other times. Butthey all make a fine frame together.

6

Birds from other side

We ran in half pants ,in sweaty fear of ghosts in trees , birds thatmeant ancient fear of bodies ,while perched on tiled roofs, from life’sother side.

Bodies waited in tired old buildings before they were cut up bysurgeon to find out why birds had left them and were nowperched on roof tiles.

7

Alphabet

Earth on earth, the black slate is a blank, a slate for throwing atthe child for failure,who learns his first letters against crows,citrus leaves mingled with Christchurch sandalwood pasteand waters in alcove. God’s child will supervise from a crossup if child is learning alphabet against crows on the lemontree, thirsty in pot pebbles.

Son of God , thirsty crows , citrus leaves are all the big childremembers at sunset the sun to go behind trees and dog barks.There are lotuses in a pond smelling hills.The water we drink ismixed with seed, so as to clarify the muddy waters ,if any.

In the gold of a sunset the slate is filled, rather too much withconnections, wires, arrows straying beyond the wood frame. But westill see faint lines of an alphabet,thirsty crows on trees,gowned teachers amid smells of sandal paste , lotus ponds wedrank waters from, mixed with seed, there at the top , below thewood frame.

8

The cities we lived

In the plagued beautiful city where I lived you would celebratedeath by eating crunchy noontime snacks at the crematorium.In the non-plagued city I lived you would drink to ongoingdeath, a nightly celebration over drum beat and country.

But in the other city I lived you would celebrate death by actuallydying. A moneyed death gas would generously put sleeping streetpeople to never ending sleep .

We also celebrated in that city our own personal death , wherea mom would turn ice and later a mango tree .We have sincecome away to another city while she is still there presidingover local wind and rain .Here in Sultan’s tomb city we awaitfurther celebration.

9

We make up our mother

We vaguely make up the lineaments of our mother, over little ballsof finely rounded rice in sticky paste to be picked up and eaten bycrows. We make them in smoky daydreams conjured up by aSanskrit incantation by middle man between us and death.

Crows do not come nowadays to walls. We make them up fromflames of twigs.We exist as mother’s dream figments in her oldsleep continuing as our mother. Her rice for eating is yearlyconsigned to flames. Flames eat rice balls as vanished crows. Wemake up mother’s face from words.

10

The sea rose like a wall

The ruins resounded with their mantras as our footsteps felt themonks’ ghosts striding in and out of the empty rooms whose burntbricks went into a huddle, in sun-burnt bushes and pieces of rocks.

The sea lapped up against the bare hills like it did when it hadfirst brought them from distant shores, for Buddha peace.Weclimbed down the hill to the calm sea that would rise like a wallup to the point where the sea ended and the sky began.

(on a visit to the recently excavated ruins of Thotlakonda Buddhistmonastery in Vizag)

11

Distance of time

With a distance of time ,what had looked white would turn vagueand gray by the growing years –our wading in knee-deep muddyrain waters in the streets by white walls missing in places, themen who tucked white lungees in the waists, the coins that feltround to fingers in pockets, the rivers dancing round heads ofmountains.

The walls stretched interminably to a white sky hiding bush andsnakes in them gently rising, feet shuffling to rustling sounds of dryleaves.The squirrels had built bridges for man-gods and earnedthree dark stripes on their backs.Strange birds would sing inthe sky deaths of our lives.

With more distance of time our eyes slowly fell and the bodyhurried past closing our spaces.The distances are now small,the skyline close.

12

Kangchengunga

Our mountain dreams lay behind rain and fog ,a silken curtainholding all our golden dreams of a rising sun painting its dizzy peaksend to end. Now, looming clouds hide sun’s gold from eyesdrowned by raindrops dripping from umbrellas.

We open our umbrellas to endless rain in bridges that are walkingpeople hidden in their umbrellas. Our umbrellas are not closing toflicking buttons. Between us and the Mount Kangchenjunga isimpenetrable rain.

13

Slate

Earth on earth, the black slate is a blank, a slate for throwing failureat the child , who learns his first letters against crows, citrus leavesmingled with Christchurch sandalwood paste and waters in alcove.God’s child will supervise from a cross up if child is learningalphabet against crows on the lemon tree, thirsty in potpebbles.

Son of God , thirsty crows , citrus leaves are all the big childremembers at sunset ,the sun to go behind trees and dog barks.There are lotuses in a pond smelling hills.The water we drink ismixed with indup seed, so as to clarify the muddy waters ,if any.

In the gold of a sunset the slate is filled, rather too much withconnections, wires ,arrows straying beyond the wood frame. But westill see faint lines of an alphabet,thirsty crows on trees,gowned teachers amid smells of sandal paste , lotus ponds wedrank waters from, mixed with seed, there at the top , below thewood frame.

14

Cumins and goins

He the poet of the lower case keeps coming and going. “Injust” has just cumin with a lame goat (not duck) balloon man.Like in the ads new stocks are just in. The balloons are high upto the spring.

Here in our basement there are comings and goings. Basementgirls come out for the ice cream man , who pulls out his cones fromthe basement of his trolley where the cones were sleeping . Our girltongues come out from their mouths where they were sleeping. It issuch a fine spring to watch the comings and goings of girltongues softly over ice cream cones.

(Reference to e.e.cumins poem “In Just”)

15

Dad’s face

In words it is my deal in silence, an agreement with electric fan,astillness breathing night air.

Sixty six years of dad’s still face was as if it was an electric fanwhirring in a room’s midnight.

Wipe the dust off the fan’s face to experience death’s stillness,still a running proxy for away.

16

A little black bird on my clothesline

We see our poetry’s death in a recess, as a little black bird on ourclothesline that has come away from dark night.

We have a little black bird’s lonely night on a clothesline perchedwith our single sock, the other a wet body dropped to floor.

The body thinks death all its life away from sensual things andgrapes and women and poems and rainbows. When bodydrops body loses nothing.

( Referring to From Mirror Image by Louise Gluck)

17

In the eye of waiting

Here I am waiting in the eye , its pupil in tears and an overflowing.Vasan eye care will now check my iris and the uvii. I am notweeping. Am I sweet in my body?

Down in the pit of my stomach is the fear of turning a blindpoet. Another Borges who makes a library of books behind hiseyelids.Neatly stacked by centuries, ever since Sophocleswrote Oedipus and Milton his Paradise Lost .

18

In the snow hills

We were in deep snow and had a mighty fall, like the good old Jack. In the mountains you have a free fall, a pure white fall from a deepblue sky.

The bones hurt , colorless bones against a white snow. But outsidethe bones a hurt is generally blood red or maroon like a school girl’ssweater in the hills. When you have a free fall , you shall feelentirely free in the vastness of the mountains. Like the winds in theocean not bound by the rules of the waters.

The bodies have falls like autumns. There are winds settingthem free.

The old ride happy sledges down. Like they are horses. Thehorses that do not laugh out loud as in the internet chats. Butwhen the old slide down in fright, the horses seem to neigh as if theare laughing out loud.

If masters urge the horses on by filthy abuses , they retort by theirinstant poop droppings.

* Horses and crows

In the deep snows horses take us to the higher echelons. We arenot big shots and we only want to see our phallus God rising fromsnow. The horses have hoofs that carefully negotiate snow andmud.

19

The horse’s masters urge them on. If they are wayward they hurlfilthy abuses at them. Horses somehow understand . They are hurtif the masters call their parents horses of questionable morals. Andtheir moms unchaste and their dads fornicators. They protestinstantly by poop droppings.

The crows in the Himalayas are fat and their cries are hoarse caws,so different from their cousins from our daily coast. But they sit onelectric wires just like their cousins in the plains do. Against thewhite of the snows they shine darkly. They may not take to the riceballs we offer to our dead every year. But we have not verified thisagainst the white purity of the snows.

* Rabbits

For a mere Rs10, you can hold the rabbit. Sort of .Get yourselfphotographed holding the rabbit. Rabbits are a cute loveliness likethe snows on the top of the hills. It is like getting yourselfphotographed hurling fistfuls of snow. It is such cute.

* Dog

On the shaky bridge the friendly dog sniffs our pant-leg. No, it is notabout to bite it.It is just extending a snout of friendship. Together we shake on thisrickety bridge ,it seems to say.

In the Himalayas the dogs are large and furry. But they bark all thesame, when a new dog enters their territory.

20

* Goddesses

In the snow ,hills goddesses bless everyone with year-round wealthand happiness. They go in processions on the road accompaniedby music. The men blow large sized curved trumpets in their honor.

Sometimes they shake the Goddesses as if they are dancing.

* Pines

The pines are everywhere in the snow hills. They are covered with awheat flour of ice. The sun comes and laughs their snow flour off,making them green again.

So they always pine for the sun.

* Rivers

In the mountains the rivers come down as heaven’s snow. Theyflow through the boulders making such deep gorges that we turngiddy looking down.

The boulders in the hills sometimes feel the need for autonomy.Aided by a reactionary rain they loose themselves and crash-landon the mountain roads.

Apple trees delicately hang on to the edges of cliffs. Like houses,brightly painted, their roofs of green tin sheets, their walls of woodand stone.

21

Apple trees stand bereft of their leaves. They will grow them byJune .By October ,their branches will be laden with fruit.

* Holiday at somebody’s home

You go up the carved steps of the mountains and reach a holidayhome. A home that is no holiday, with wind and storm blowing onthe windows.

You have Dalhousie’s old ghost rattling the doors. He was the onewho lapsed native kingdoms. Until his own empire lapsed.

Everyone lapses.

* Apples and cheeks

The Apple trees stand on the edges of the hills ,bare naked anddancing. They will sprout leaves, flowers,fruit by June till Oct.The peaches have only young leaves and pink flowers. It will be twoor three months before there will be fruit .

The women have Apple cheeks. They have baskets on their backsfresh with grass. When it is Apple time their backs shall have redripe apples.

22

Star count

The old lady went away out of malignancy leaving a high andhiccupping husband with the dancing throat in the kitchen in its maleegotism and paternalistic rights. The lady has since embraced herfire leaving her man entirely unembraced.

She whose eyes have long gone wild in her son’s sleep, is lookingfor stars in the night at their last count by him. She has forgot thecount in the melee of she who went away to embrace fireleaving husband highly unembraced.

23

Confessional

Write chunks of white poetry on a black night. Your poetry may beof your narcissistic self morbidly sensing the way the tree waves.Below your darkness, a schoolgirl laughs in her sleep overyesterday’s homework in a waving paper ,below a basement,between pictures of gods.

Poetry is confessional, some redness in face looking intocrevices to let things not sleep.

But sleep alone will deliver up your confession .You turn to yourside to face a blank wall where beginning , middle are not picturedand the end turns out to be a breath, a lack .

24

Big flowers

That was a bush-shirt with big, big flowers ,a soft windy silkenshirt we wore to school with pockets on both sides that hadbulged with flowery spaces and air.We were hurling fingers inair as if clawing it, not for any complaint, but just in boy-show.

(We had not picked it up in the wayside bush. We were notbush-men of arrows and bow)

We had left our long shirt with horn buttons. In it we looked likefierce Afghans in turbans with mustaches that struck terror in shirts.Our buttons were two at the top, to our neck.

When the bush shirt came our money changed .Our annas went offour to a rupee, to easy paisa .We now ate rice in shining stainlesssteel plates and we played in streets seven stones and ball.

Our mustaches are now silver above frayed collars. We nowhave pounding hearts under our shirts ,weak of memory, butstill love the big flowers.

25

Disappearing

Yesterday night we had heard another act of disappearing. As thetelevision news hour went on as a battle of bright wits , thedisappearing sound played softly in the wind.

He had appeared a year ago in a balcony of some one else’sdisappearing. The latter smoke was a sound we all heard in ourplastic chairs. And now what a fine disappearing act he wouldperform ,while still in heavy-lidded sleep!

Absurdly soundless.

26

From reason to belief

The hills slipped down endless slopes.The metallic cliffs werecopper red.A craggy protuberance was bird against thetranslucence of a May sky.Miracles were rife in the rarefied airbecause the smiling God up there would turn every reason to belief.

Once on the mountain the sampangi (magnolia champaka)fragrance burst on our mystic air.We felt content not to haveviews to beauty that defied viewpoints.

27

Electric thoughts

While lighting my bulb, electricity rules my adult mind as making myfather weightless to sky.

When kids we had no electricity, just dimwit kerosene lampshanging on the door frame.When it rained there were halos ofmoths. The halos moved on the wall in shadows.

Then we had shadows gently touching wall lizards . Electricity finallycame and removed shadows except lizards.

The electric thoughts still play on my grownup head,especiallythe then grownup tongues clucking sadness at the child’s lossof father.

28

All things breath before they are ice

Seventeen and clerk ,on work to support a sister who had embracedher electricity he is the one whose elbow gently nudges, now to apark bench for old men’s sitting,a nephew lightly less old, former kidat his elbow. Now eighty and two uncle stares at night as thenephew stares lightly at his own night.

(Take care from falling and nightly bumps like your sister had beforeshe hit the ice)

Sister was mother to this slightly old man and awaiting his ice to hit ,nice and cold, nephew and breathing, in a jab at poems.Poetrybreathes before nephew turns ice, like all things breath beforethey turn ice.

29

Cloud in the head

With a cold in the head ,the last two days were body -centric, atnight and on the day . On the day it was a head full of emptyechoes. Like an abandoned factory shed.

In the night sleep hovered over the eyes not descending. The eyesdreamed their sleep and when sleep would come it had frightfuldreams straight out of the belly.

There were no walks. But there were poems under the night. Awinter poem. A poem about mom’s dementia. At midnight she wouldgrope in the dark and bang her head against the wall.

These days a woman among relatives who had a stroke watching television smiles all day. She has no tooth-edged mutterings.She smiles as if she has understood everything.

30

Buddha smiles at our ruins

Just back from a giant Buddha on Krishna’s muddy banks.

There was also a tall marble phallus God who looked us in the eye.There the river flowed by in trickles . A few boats of people madevague gestures at us from its streams.

Before, we spent an islands night in the river. A paper star shonebright on the boat anchoring shore ,mobbed by night moths. Theriver was gentle and shone with boats of incoming lights. In themorning we caught a biscuit of a sun in the clouds. A man woulddive into the sun on the river and quickly come up with river pearls.

The Buddha we saw sitting on a giant stupa. He was smiling at ourruins. In the museum we saw the ruins gathered up neatly forimagination.

In the island four black dogs squatted in human corners. Atmidnight they would bark at wild boars and river snakes. Tallreeds waved to the breeze on the ripples. A yellow GoddessMother ruled the island. The same MA who sits on the hilllights looking over the city and the river barrage on which menwent up and down.

31

Balloons

A little girl prances around while others play games and turn jokers.They gawk, they chat old times and they watch kids blow balloons.They are generally waiting for dinner . Their own balloons aregetting bigger .

A little girl turns one year of age.

The morning after:

The morning is grey. Early , I could only think of star pointings on aprior night .Their milk spilled on skyways. Thepointings happened on a night four years ago when a star pointingfather would turn a star. The daughter is still trying to find himin the stars.

Yesterday it was a banyan that made us less sad. That was in themorning when the sun was caught in the eye of the banyan.

In the evening we heard somebody in a far off town had crossed theroad. He was actually crossing the river of death . In the night itwas a joyous celebration of birth.

32

Stone animals

We live within boundaries set by stone animals. Our nests aredefined by them. They are our holes in space.

Into the late night we were defending our house. They cannot call itirregular, from a certain government file. But governments are notsupposed to think.

The monkeys on the road are continuously lying – please do notspeak, hear,see evil. The government officer is asking for a mereRs 500 to deal with abstract boundaries of our house. The peacockis strutting its cloud happy feathers . The elephants have stonememories.

33

Under the banyan

Under a warm golden sun , a new winter breeze is whistling in theleaves. We sit under a mildewed banyan. It’s fallen sun-dried leavesmake dragon sounds on the road’s tarred surface. A yellow leafhas just passed us by as if it is the very banyan beginning with thewind.

The shadows of the trees move as if they are realistic and abiding.

I hear the titu bird’s cries opening our minds to spaces. Titutitu ,it cries out not asking for our life as it did in our childhood.A winter breeze brings a cock’s crow . It has just opened itsbleary eyes to a Sunday morning.

34

Rice husk

Forum is a nobody’s discussion joint. It is a glitzy shopping mall thatwalks on curious gawkers. A third of the city crowd seems to bethere as you can see from the cars in its underground womb.

We go to eat stuff from a capital joint. Not curious gawkers, wereturn with oily belches.

In the evening we walk through streets not full of sawdust but the fallen scraps of conversation from houses. Their words resonatethrough a dark silence that has descended upon the houses .

A dark silence is before men return from their walks. The mensit on stone slabs in the square and sip tea . When it is darkthey will return to pick up threads from the earlier quarrels withthe neighbours.

P.S. (24/11/2015)

Looking back I have not noticed sawdust yet but I have justheard rice husk is no more. Rice Husk is the name of the loyalhouse maid in our inlaws house. She is 90 years of age. Mymemory is of a woman sweeping the house corners ina body wrinkled like a jackfruit. She had memories of myfather-in-law’s wedding moments.

35

All of a peace

Instead of from a green bench let this day be of wild things. Thepeace of wild things. Key press devilry- piece of wild thongs.

Here I hide from a large sun behind a small tree . Tree carries arag’s tag of some one’s colourful saree waving in the breeze. Sareemight have had a baby swinging in the breeze while mom wascarrying bricks in her head.

A crow caws a wild thing of peace. Another summer coming.

On the walk back are six puppies crossing the road. A man issitting ,outside his canvas shack ,in a three-legged chair,sipping tea.

A peace of wild things shall prevailWith another summer coming on us.Another summer’s wild things comeFloating as shadows in its rivulets.

Another summer will soon be on usAnd it will occupy us in its shadows.To the people who are asking next ?We say another summer is coming.

( Referring to Wendell Berry’s beautiful poem The Peace of WildThings)

36

Priest less angry

We were waiting for God’s doors to open. The priest is angry oldman . He told us curtly to wait outside for the doors to open.Meantime we could pray to Monkey God behind the big striped redrock.

We had come from a 3 km long walk in the KBR park. There werejust four peacocks in the park by the last count.

We decided to place a hundred rupee note in God’s plate . Theangry old man was now less angry. He would give us God’scoconut . He asked us to sit in God’s hall under a fan.

Please make a chutney of the coconut. We will, we will, wesaid highly impressed.

37

I have to make a story

On the walk back I see another water drill for a new house site. It’stireless hum will fill a day’s silence.

By evening there will be rivers of soft white loam on the streets.

I knock at this man’s door on the third floor to hand over housepapers. Wife opens the door and arches her eyebrows to enquirewhile her mouth is foaming with toothpaste. She then quickly shutsthe door and bolts it from inside.

I wait in the corridor for the man to turn up.

Sure enough, I have to make a story. A parchi for earlymorning. A green bench narrative.

38

Foundation is where I write on

Now I sit on top of the foundation dangling my feet in its futurespace. Opposite to me there is the sun just above the brick layersof clouds. Tall sunburnt grass is waving to the wind.

Now the sun is up sprinkling his shine on my shirt. He is nowblinding my eyeglasses like yellow fog and soon he will be all overthe place.

An aluminium foil from somebody’s eating is rustling like asilver leaf in nearby breeze. Broken bottles lie in the grass asrelics of drunken nights.

39

Swife’s skin spots

The wife’s red spots have remained red since they were lastmentioned but the wife is now swife. Swife is an older version ofwife whose red spots have matured to turn senior citizens. Themischievous anti-bodies responsible for their outbreak are nowmore calculated in their approach.They appear entirely imperviousto our assaults by way of immunoglobulin therapy.

A mere congress is grass in the lakeside and harbors enemies. Or apapaya pollen that comes floating on the street air.

Despair is glossed over. A witch doctor might help. A doctor whocould shake the ghosts out of women. At the village there is onenear the railway line.He would send forth tiny brown pellets downyour throat like bullets across the vast expanse of your stomach. Hewould look down his eyes on your epidermis and determine thebullets . He would speak nothing and could say nothing. When he isnot sending down bullets of brown stuff down your throat he isshaking women off their ghosts.

We waited outside iron cages. There were women squatting in thecages waiting for their turn. They had daughters who had carriedghosts in their bodies. A sprig of neem leaves is waved to keep theghost at bay. Ghosts are scared of the allpowerful words of thewitch doctor. The daughters then shook like trees in the windstorm.

Luckily the swife carried no ghosts in her. The red spots are notresult of any ghostly actions.

40

The village doctor

The man with a red dot looks down his eyesMarginally to below the epidermis of a skinThe subterfuge where stomach humors show.The Hakim is monkey man of a myth’s fameMaking men swallow brown pellets for quickCures for stomach’s skin and mind maladiesThat make women shake like full-blown treesCaught in a windstorm, their hair disheveled.

A middleman helps us wade crowds of men.Men wait outside to enter unreal iron cagesAnterooms for an entry to the medicine man.The man would then bend his ears sidewaysTo muttered tales about stomachs and devilsAnd scrawl prescriptions in quick round lettersThat wriggled like earthworms in a new furrow.The middleman now takes us to growing rice,Proud to show his rice dominions till sky-high.We see more men coming for women’s ghosts .

41

The river

High on the view of the sandy river,the trees squatted along amossy wall ,open-eyed and shaking with curiosity.Through the riverview, mild winds evaporated a brown sand that mirrored a strangeworld holding a moment of the trees. A house loomed on thehorizon with a half vehicle parked before it respectfully.It seems acertain German had made a fetish of making beauty out of a lateriteterrain that boasted two rivers, between them at a sisterly distanceof twenty five kilometers.A park named after him had to bere-named after the white Caucasians left the place and it was dulynamed after a free country’s prime minister who had been namedafter a certain river canal of Kashmir. Lameyer loved steel andflowers. And rivers with hot sand.He made much out of them.

Nothing burned at Burnpur.Only there was a certain Burn of MartinBurns fame whose name it bore after the old name of diamondtown(Hirapur) went away from people’s memory.The park rose highon everyone’s agenda, the park of Lameyer, the German who lovedterraces of flower gardens along the river bank.

The question arose whether Damodar was a male river or afemale.It was finally settled it was a male river. How could it be afemale river when it turns so violent in monsoon and destructive topeople? But now the river is tamed by five dams in the valley.It issad river,a sorrowful one river with large vacant stretches.

42

She did not die too much

A river bank had beckoned from afar , beyond domes of haystacksthat rose like temples and palm trees that stood in lines on paddyfield hedges. A girl who died to the river bank would have herashes added to its flow.

This girl of woman had always greeted me from a child’s mind thatrecognized a kindred spirit acknowledging the truth of an invisibleconnection that existed between us .Her presence consisted of aseries of absences all of which formed a big presence ,whenshe was around but not around much .I mean when she wassupposedly alive but not tangible at one place in the home. Sheloved the wind the trees and the creatures on the leaves, the yellowmoon,the red sun.She always hated to be in the four walls of ahome. It now makes hardly a difference she is not around. Becauseshe will always come back eventually. When someone is mentallyretarded she does not die too much.

Returning home the train flowed to Bibinagar where hundreds offluorescent graves of Bibis (wives) greeted bleary eyes. They werewaiting for live husbands to lay annual wreaths on their grieves.Actually they were buying fresh flowers for their wives not yet intheir graves.

Returning home to the Facebook of my home computer I found oneface in Lousiana missing. Such things happen behind your back.There was no reason for Prabhakar to vanish from my Facebook.

May be we shall become pals once again in our Facebook up there!

43

Thank God, she did not die much

When I heard the news of my cousin’s death in the car, I hadthoughts of my triumph over fate . When seeking a stoned beauty atdusk I went into the emptiness left by a person who I would prefernot to be there .When she is there she is an interruption on myhappiness, on my being there. Yet when she is not there now, sheis still an interruption on my seeking beauty , my pursuit ofhappiness, and on my just being there.

If her being did not matter ,why would her absence matter? Whenthere is no matter, where is the emptiness left by it? Surprisinglyshe represented a hole in my mind and the hole continues notwithstanding her not being there. Her absence began when she wasborn and continues now ,even after her death. If only she had notbeen born!

If a retarded person dies what will happen to the mind that remainedin its journey at a fairly early stage but the body reached a full fortyfive years of age? It is as though what died was a mere idea of aperson who had once lived just about ten years or so.Because thesmile she died smiling was a ten years old’s smile. Thank god, shedid not die much.

44

Mothers of dead sons

In the evening a soft sun was still hanging above the apartments onthe other side of the lake as it shimmered from a clearing on thebank. We talked of a mother of a dead son, speculating whether abond continued to exist between the daughter-in-law and themother-in-law. Did she matter to son’s wife, after the son had gone?After the link between them has become conspicuously absent, Imean.

Photographer Errol Morris talks of a photograph beingdecontextualized, torn from the fabric of the life it represents. Aphotograph cannot be true or false because it is not an opinion, aview. It simply is. A photographer omits the elephant standingoutside the frame of a photograph and is there a duty on our part toplace a metaphorical elephant in the frame to give it a context?

Didn’t the son give a context to the co-existence of the two women?What if we placed a metaphorical son in this our frame? Think, Isaid to my wife.

But then there are not two ,but three women. Between them is adead man, a son, a husband and a father:

Three women

Between us three there is he, a white piece of memoryThat defeats us daily by the night, occupying our body,As fears spread in the belly like a jelly, these silly fears.

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He that wore a body till recently is now an idea mainlyThat spread from our sleeping body, between our sheets,In dreams, mainly, to a sky that arched over our body.Our light shadows coalesce with his own absence of bodyEntering our common dreams in our separate sleeps.

( Three women are mother, wife and daughter of a dead man)

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Stones in the sun

The chemistry of a winter sun goes well with history’s rocks and thegnarled trees of yesterday’s leaves. Stumps of fallen trees sprawl inthe rocks of history as men make their way up on polished stones oftime’s footfalls. Up there is a red temple to an ancient motheralongside brown boulders warm with tender sun. The trees shakewith birds that chirp like the voices of children waiting for the teacherto come.

A certain village official had made God’s jewelry from out of theState’s coffers. Here is the dark of a cell in which he had spentyears before he was released on God’s intervention. But darkdoubts persist as brown-winged bats that have lived till today nowcome to hit you in the face from history.

In Golconda , a matchstick is not seen as a flame but heard. Acrossthe boulders and in the blue sky, to the King’s palace at the top toalert him of unwelcome guests.

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Star-dust

The news came in the morning. A young man who had on theprevious night pointed the stars to his daughter found himself turnedinto one .Forty four was no time for turning a star. Look at the Mars,burning brightly, he had said to a wide-eyed daughter. In themorning he was found absolutely blue. The heart stopped atapproximately 3 A.M. trying to gauge the depths of an astral sky.

Did he die in sleep? Was he in a dream he never woke up torecount?

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Verti-go !

These four days I have been trying to grapple with vertigo, afrightening thing with the head when the world spins without yourasking for it. It spins like a top, like the globe-earth in the ocean ofemptiness that the boar-God carried on his tusks to save it from theapocalypse.

Of course the spinning was in a movie we saw when were still inknickerbockers. It spun like the model earth-globe that our teacherhad spun on its brass axis illustrating our geography for us.

Luckily for me it is called by a nice medical name: BenignParoxysmal Positional Vertigo. The name is truly awe-inspiring.Only the first word “benign” saves the day. In simple terms it issomething that takes place in the vestibular inner ear, anaccumulation of crystals leading to a loss of balance, a loss ofspace in the vastness of the inner ear.

What do you expect in an old ear, getting ready to hang itsboots?

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Evening in the park

One could go there for random images, vignettes from life, stories inthe making. Faces tell stories, the way they wince, pucker up,smooth their hair. Some times the way they walk,crouch,and bendbackwards.

Some times faces gather up the setting sun, when their wrinklesbecome deep trenches around their red mouths, full of expectationand reality.

You enter the park ,making clockwise oval movements on thewalking track, one per minute.When you enter the park gate ,youalways turn to the left. So does everybody else ,who walks. Youtherefore flow with the crowd. You can hardly recognize daily faces.Today I could see a new face, a young bespectacled face becauseit had entered the park gate and turned to the right. I saw it comingface to face.

Only one in a hundred turns to the right ,entering the park gate. Amaverick?

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Sitting in the balcony

When you are behind a balcony parapet wall, the day sounds as ifof the sky with all its colors and smells.The sounds come filtered inthe opacity of a middling wall ,on which stand majestic plants,embedded in the earth of pots, but proud of their lineage under thesky.

Tiny saffron roses, four of them, sit huddled together in thebreeze.They draw their inspiration from the distant earth ofelsewhere. But their dance in the breeze is just like it was when theyhad their first feet planted in the vastness of the earth.

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The carpenter’s spiritualism

The proud carpenter quickly vanishes like the turpentine he uses onthe wood surfaces .His words sound hollow like the half-madeskeletons of cupboards he has left incomplete on the stair-case,gaping at the morning sun day after day. The sun enters theirdomes as though they are cavities waiting to be filled with matter.

His body sloshes with drink, breathing like hospital. His body shakeslike the beach trees in the night, that by the violence of their bodiesappear to be taking leave of the mother earth.

He would, like them, appear to be tenuous on the earth, his kneesshaking as he dealt with the bodies of trees.

The carpenter wants keenly to realize beautyFrom his bearded face wearing drops of liquorOn the corners of lips, with a buddy on bench,Sunday not surely being a holiday from beauty.

Wood is butter, to the knife and the hacksaw.But liquor is quicker, on the body, behold and lo.

Beauty is not always dead wood imitating life.Beauty lies in a shack, a thatch and on a benchFrothing in brown at the top, to the flies buzzingAround eyes ,the world having lost its outline.The earth and the sky become a single mass.

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Communication reaches its lowest point

In the train it was still night and sleep. At four, the train softly flowedin the night holding out a promise of home by eight. That was whencommunications reached their lowest point.

The mobile phone suddenly jumped from my pocket into thesink-hole and slid into the dark depths of a running night.Apparently it was time to part company with my phone. Looks like Ihave to build a new relationship.

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Justice for the dead

In the yellow light and some green trees we tried to recall a life oncelived ,here in the court of justice arguing for others.

Arguing for one self, for one’s own living. A lawyer’s life well livedand loved. Can one remember a soul that is lost to us by a few lawbooks kept in the library for future lawyers?

Large trees overhang. Shadows loom large. A library is waitingto be explored by young lawyers wanting to learn. The efforts ofa dead man’s family to install him in people’s memories will nowbear fruit. Will they? Will there be reading or just socializing over acuppa or a night whiskey over cards? As banal as that? We maywait and see.

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A thousand lamps for God

This day , four years ago, in Bhopal, we had stood in rows afterrows of lamps around God’s pillar, looking for mirrors of lights inpeople’s eyes. We saw the pipal tree, up above, lighting with newfound love for white birds that fluttered in half-sleep. High above thepipal shone a soft full moon overseeing a thousand lights. Themoon stood on the brass pillar like a bright lamp that droveaway our darkness, inside our minds.

Women took the lamps one by one, neatly arranging them at thebase of the pillar. The flames licked the dark air of the night ,lighting it with their fragrance.

This day ,here in Hyderabad, we saw the lamps cowering behindcardboard walls erected in the temple. The flames were bright andsoft as they had been in Bhopal but there was no pipal tree throughwhich the moon supervised the lamps.

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Birth and death

The horoscope ties up your life’s span ,classifying it into neatdivisions but at the higher end leaves it open-ended . After 62 thepaper has to say nothing. The stars are at their best luminescencebut in the higher regions they slowly fade away.

Why are we afraid of death? Asks our auntie. It is just that you go tosleep and do not get up from it. Every night we go to sleep but arewe afraid of not getting up? In what way is that night different fromall the other nights ? Makes sense.

But death is not separate from birth . In the sense it is directlyderived from it and draws its source from it. Had I not appearedhere,in 1949, I would not have to deal with death. My deathwould happen because of the events in 1949.

And pray, why did those events happen? All because of an idea,which might or might not have happened in someone’s mind:

1949

That was when there were no shirts on the backOnly glistening oils on body,first anger bawling outBreath surmounting cloth, sweet sick baby smell.Wonder where it had been all along, a watery thingThat had sprung as an idea in somebody’s mind.

Its anxious people laughed at the undue hurry To reach pink nipples, forget dark that had passed

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The green fluid ,the beginning of white memory As colors began, grays flowed softly from the sky A shimmer of light ,a pouring in shafts of sunlight .

The idea might not have sprung in someone’s mind.The 1949 summer might have been like any summer.

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Electricity

When everything was going the Borges way and my headseemed a vast egg full of astral matter that could spill anytimelike yellow yolk, a little recall of the details relating to my owncoming into this earth is in order:

Electricity struck a mother’s middle fingerCausing its radically twisted views about life.The electric wires came from a father’s loveWho embraced them to get the wind going,For a baby- son perspiring in summer heat.

Baby might have gurgled a viable disapproval.It was still unclear if it was okay to deprive sonOf his father’s love, by embracing live wires.

It looked a wrong choice, a crazy quirk of fate,A poetic justice, well before a future unfolded,A finger-pointing by dark fate at a life-scriptBefore the prologue is writ, an epilogue began.

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Egg-heads

We heard about the boy staring in the hospital, trying hard not to cry,as the hospital staff set about shaving his head in preparation forthe brain operation. It was the uncertainty of what lay in the skullthere that made him cry and only a joke by another who had asimilar head could make the situation less grim.

We are together in this, said my son, who has had his head shavedrecently in Tirupati before God. They laughed together at theircommon egg-heads.

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We are moved to a different night

We are in a different night today ,a night made up by trains blaring,tall coconuts swaying to rain music and short walks on a patch ofmoss-black on a terrace roof dry with rain marks. The coconutshang heavily on the parapet,their older ones waiting to drop onunsuspecting heads below. The guavas ,ripe and yellow, havedisappeared in the parrots’ stomachs but their hollow telltale shellsare still there on the earth.

The hundred gold coins flowers are conspicuous by their absencebut their fragrance can be imagined on their heavy branches nearthe compound wall.The cobbler is mending passers-by in theirsandals under an umbrella ,with a stone slab polished smooth forthe cutting of the leather.The dog in the second floor is hidingbehind its loud barks but not much hostility is expected today ,on acool evening like this.

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Granite

These days I am surrounding myself with granite.The beauty of thegranite keeps me awake, like the dark night behind the trees. Softand silky. The more you work on it ,the softer it becomes.

There is now granite against my sky.Abutting my trees.Graniteis now my piece of the mountains. It sings my dreams of themountains and plays my mountain tunes.

Granite

Granite is our stone, blue – black like Krishna,That provokes strong feelings, hard on fingersBut soft and silky in its core, in hues like rain.It is like Krishna’s belly, filled with flute musicBy a river of gentle ripples flowing from trees.There is rain and wind in it, as in moonless sky.Feel it , play on it and sing its mountain tunes.The more you work on it the silkier it becomes.

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The whistle

At 2 midnight , the search for the day’s poem began .Ideas had tostart somewhere, before they flowed. One looked for little nudgesthat would begin the process. A scrap of poetry or an interestingquote would present many possibilities, a vast canvas for thewanderings of the mind.

Sometimes the nudges are a scattered sound or a creature of thenight. Like for example , the gurkha watchman who paces up anddown in the vast wastes of the night, tapping his stick on the earth.Alerting about possible intruders, cat burglars.

Here it is, yesterday’s temporary poem, a poem that began intemporary origins but threatened to become a fixture of the webspace.Not permanent because the subject is so ephemeral, like awhiff of wind at midnight. Things will not remain the same. I am notthere tomorrow, my poem shall disappear as anonymousgoogledygeek.( A cross between google- geek and gobbledycock).

The whistle

The whistle blares it is the inky night of 2 O ‘clock Marked by feet in old boots, in a Himalayan walk, With their stick tapping the earth to warn thieves. Another whistle, man and boy blew this morning Whose shrillness of blowing sounded quite hollow Across the bare earth and houses to friends down All in mirth, the boy in a snigger after the whistle. Their whistle is mere surrogate for night’s cricket

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Since the latter has taken short leave from bushes. When our rice is ready for meal in pressure cooker The whistle sounds blowing the lid off afternoon nap. The pressure rises in vapor, pressing down the valve, A short whistle-blower on hunger pangs in our belly.

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Ravi Call

This sun is your once Ravi and it is now his callThe weaving of a fine heart that would stop later.The sun is dead usually, on its very slow daily act.Can we have a quick funeral in the head please?The least expensive and salt and tears not much.

It was all in the system, in the streets of Hong KongThat winded down in back alley, among new menOf eyes that did not see you much but in earphones.

His eyes were full of fire, the rage of a funeral fireBut the way their eyes would bore you in the backThey had said their piece but made peace with you.Ravi’s system is in place, now chairman of nothing.The sun must set for the day and it is all in systemWhere a logout has to be performed for every user.

(Homage to Ravi Kaul, my former colleague and a dear friendwho had passed away early this year-the name Ravi means thesun)

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Excrement

As we trod it on way to the templeWe would call it by a pompous name.But that spoiled our mood for God.

God, approached, seemed to laughAt the dirty insinuation, in the wayWe have linked a temple’s holinessTo our erroneous stamping of footOn the execrable stuff on the side.

Shit! We said in smelly exaggeration.He would greet us with a floral smileDespite the smell from our underfoot.

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We do not have any stories to tell her

In the afternoon we visited her in her old home.She stood there near the water cooler expecting us .Just what she was expecting. Someone would come.The others expected someone of her kin to come.

There she was, shaking like a tree in the wind.There was this electricity passing in herAs if she was just an old tangle of wires.As though a lightning struck her from the skyAnd reached down all the way to the earth.

Doctor? It is all a mental thing.How does one get out of these mental things?Nobody believes her.Nobody does.I want you to say something. Don’t keep quiet.Say anything. A story, may be.Say it for God’s sake. Tell me a story.

Your silence is my utter darkness.I cannot breathe in such darkness.

Her eyes dilated in horror as her words flowedIn a cascade of fiery rebukes and pitiful entreaties.

We did not have any stories to tell her.

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Stories

Today our temple way had a spasticGirl that attempted to break in our space.Her overwhelming limbs softly touched us.An old widow in yellow fell prostrateBefore the marble fakir with head-clothThat presided life from the tomb of death.

We are here to make new lives in this temp’leFor our children who have their fresh stories.We make a scroll of their living togetherHere duly witnessed by the monkey-God.

It is just that some stories are getting overSome are in progress and new ones begin.

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It is in the mind

This morning the lake became pure and silver once again.The sun had already risen above the boulders in its middleThe ripples shimmered as a gentle winter breeze tickled it.

The smelly fish of the vendor on the lake’s banks vanished.The foul gutters of humans poured into it but smelled less.A dark walking girl smelled jasmines on her ebony back.The tree that had lain dead and black there near the templeFor several months now seemed less dead and less black.

The priest’s chants from the temple now smelled of sugarAnd clarified butter ,fire and smoke, flowers and camphor .

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Her cup runneth over

We sat in the afternoon in the shadows of ancient treesPaying our tribute to the lady who had died ,of excess life.At two we were treated to a sumptuous feast in her honor,As though it was her wish that we should be so treated.After all she was sharing her surplus life here with us.You write poetry in Sanskrit ? Asks somebody from a plastic chair.Where was the promised river bank where we invoke her spiritAmid deep-throated Sanskrit chants and smoking holy fires?There is no river bank here but ancient red walled storied structures.Here well-fed priests call down the spirits of our dead by sonorouschants.All the while she smiles there beatifically, in the hall, from theinertnessOf her flower-garlanded two-dimensional existence of aphoto-frame.As though some of the excess life she had died of is stillspilling .

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White

A telephone call talked of an an old man with a white topee .His small-frame father ,who worked in a cement factory.The cement is no longer.The white topee is no longer.Memories linger of a city on the sea where the waves beat blackgranite rocks.The white surf of an ocean which stretches to distant AdenThere the ancestors had landed in a dhow to make tradesmen’smoney.Tall white stone buildings which stood against the blue sea.At night they wore the transparent veil of pale moonlight .On moonlit nights perfumed society people stood against the ocean.Among the rocks where the waves from the distant Gulf beat theircity.Dark people sold smuggled tape recorders with whirring tape-spools.The whitewashed buildings had white peace in their upper bellies .But in their under-bellies they had fishermen’s knives and redrevenge .A frail old man from the city made white salt at the sea-shoreAnd spun white cotton on hand-wheels and made others wearwhite.*

(*Mahatma Gandhi had been born and spent his formative years inthe city of Porbandar)

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Guests arrive

The long shadows are past ,but the short ones remain.

The sun strikes you on the rim of your head and instead of making ahalo around your head sketches your short body on the brown earthin black acrylic color.

The afternoon crows sit lazily on the dead tree’s branches and cryout an occasional caw reminding us of the coming of our guests.

Guests in these burning times when the sky pours out hot sunshineon the leafless branches? The crows continue to announce thearrival of guests with gusto,their bodies heaving rhythmically on thebranch.

But where are the guests? The afternoon brought the news of thearrival of a hot girl in my cousin’s home.She is hot because she was born this morning when the sun wasburning fiercely .

But guests are guests .

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How stories are made

The keyword and the dreams that possibly preceded it may tell mehow stories are made.

First there is a keyword .I go behind the dreams that happen beforethe keyword. A story unfolds.

It seemed the plot-line now was proceeding towards a major orminor event.

At eight in the morning I went to my bath as though I was preparingmyself for an event. At eleven the news came of the death of mycousin. Four years back he had come to our house as a pilgrim toTirumala reviving an association of four decades ago when heappeared last in my life. His story came to the denouementyesterday when the news of his death had come.

At midnight I was tossing in the bed waiting for sleep.All the while Iwas holding on to the pieces which were flying about randomlytrying to see if I could impose some unity on them.

What am I doing now but make a story ?

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A spot of red on our foreheads

Evening thoughts were temple thoughts, God thoughts,marriagethoughts

Strange girl stakes claim to my territory,my son.

She sits on God’s steps ,one below, facing our words, head-on, witheyes calm and lined with black

Her round face some times is asymmetrical, other times in perfectgeometry

Solving the problem of inertia in marriage when you come face toface with lifting huge things,others carrying mere pillows

Especially when you think nothing of carrying bigger things forothers and you make a big thing out of indifference to what othersthink.

Our words fell like the pipal leaves in the breeze

We sat under the pipal tree thinking of what life would be like forthese children if inertia were to be factored in the compatibilitycalculations

No issue ,says the girl with calm eyes.

We are here before our monkey god and we cup our palms for theholy water which we drink making a minor noise and the priest willduly put the crown of God’s feet on our heads.

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We collect our red spot of color on our foreheads where it is allwritten,our destinies.

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The night when my note became part of the night

My white ruled note became an event in the night

The night itself was an event

An event because it is a certain time-space, a physical space tied toa space of time

My note stood out in color and sound against the night because itwas an event,a certain musical space tied to time

The night was an event because it happened then and is not in thepresent space.

At the dead of the night my note became part of the night

In the morning I am chasing glowing images

Seeking the sun in words and their glow.

In between there was deja vu of certain river water which stillsmelled of the mountains

When I am not chasing iridescent images of tiny girls ,in two’s andthree’s, bursting on the conscious with halos intact

I am chasing the park images

– Of a certain balcony woman

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-Of some skin thoughts

-Of a certain man in olive green safari suit and copper red hair

-Of stream-lets of hose water which stalked the shadows on thegrass

-Of a certain overflowing woman who walked in music.

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The eclipse

On 21 st July 2009 we woke up to find the world blanked out. Thebirds in the trees seemed to keep still and the crickets went silent.Even the train hoot one heard at that time every day was missingfrom the morning’s silence. The darkness spread in our garden andto the compound wall and thence to the sky above our house. Thesolar eclipse was total and lasted for four minutes when light beganto emerge from behind the monsoon clouds and covered the worldonce again .The solar eclipse could not be seen because of theovercast sky.

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Awareness is all

In today’s pre-dawn I listened to the honk of the train that had comepiercing the morning silence as always I do at such time .It wassuch an exquisite sound but one extra thing I felt was the layers ofexquisite sounds that came as though they had come one on theother-the horn came on top of the rising crescendo of the clackety ofthe wheels as the train approached the city .The sensoryimpressions created were so exquisite that I looked for similarexcitement in the other senses trying to remember parallels in thevisual and olfactory experiences as well. I then thought about thesunlight entering my room directly as a shaft of light and the gloriousmixture it creates with the reflected light that comes bouncing off thewalls of the room.Another similar sensory impression is created bythe fragrance of the jasmines in bloom coming on top of the moistfragrance of the morning mist on the grass.

Awareness is all.

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Poetry at Kalady

We were called to the lake resort of Kumarakom for a three dayretirement counselling programme recently by my bank.The lakeresort was simply amazing.While returning we(self and spouse)visited Kalady ,the birthplace of Adi Sankaracharya .We saw themagnificent temple and were returning to our car when a mostunexpected thing happened.We saw a man calling us from thecourtyard . He offered us a meal we could not resist and it was trulydelicious. Was it Sankaracharya himself who fed us on our hungrystomachs?

On visit to Sankaracharya’s birthplace,Kalady

He seemed to have called us over for lunchIn Kalady’s heat the stomach yearned for itWhen we had gone past the river of greenWhich had changed the course at his behestTo suit his mother in old age, her water pot.The river with the crocodile of death in its bellyThe crocodile which had set his foot freeOn the promise of his forsaking the world.There is this shadow all the while, in the river,On the temple, in the tree of the snake-jasmineThe flower that adorned the God of destructionThe shadow that accompanied him everywhereSo he never forgot life’s transience and futility.

Sankaracharya was a great philosopher ,who belonged to the 8th Century A.D. He is the founder of the Advaita school of philosophy

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which says that the physical self and the spiritual self are notseparated from each other but are one and the same. The legendsays he had ,through his spiritual powers, brought the river Purnanearer to his house for the convenience of his mother .It is alsobelieved that a crocodile dragged him by his foot into the river andhis mother was forced to consent to his renouncing the world by thecrocodile which would let him go only if she consented)

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Irony

We thought we understood it all-from the day we were born .Thereis an unspoken sarcasm in the way the world is made and declaresitself to you. If there is no sarcasm explicitly present then there isirony all-present in the scheme of things. As though somebody upthere has decided to pull your legs. That was what we had beenthinking.And we thought we were one up on life when weunderstood this and walked around proudly with the knowledge.Then one day we were proved wrong and shown that the real ironywas in the way we were led to believe that we have understood itall.

Irony

There had got to be somethingBeneath all this big movementAnd umpteen noises in the vessels.We thought deep-set irony was all-presentA smirk, a delicious wink, long stridesIn green spaces towards empty buildingsAs though it was all settled.That was not. Even their irony lacked.Absence did not matter. Nor being.We smacked lips for nothing.

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Kurt Vonnegut’s Uncle Alex

Kurt Vonnegut

“…his principal complaint about other human beings was that theyso seldom noticed it when they were happy. So when we weredrinking lemonade under an apple tree in the summer, say, andtalking lazily about this and that, almost buzzing like honeybees,Uncle Alex would suddenly interrupt the agreeable blather toexclaim, ”If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

This is what I keep telling my wife and son.When there is somethinggoing on nice,why not be conscious of it and verbalize theawareness .It is by being articulate about the good things of lifehappening to you that you experience the goodness of the thing.Anobvious thing I see then is a plain simple reaction : what could be sogood as to warrant appreciation ? Was it lots of riches or miraclesolutions to life’s problems that have remained intractable all theseyears ? Miracles do not happen except the small little ones likeeverything is going on fine when something wrong is in the air orthere is a gentle breeze which touches the skin unexpectedly oreven a simple thing is the wondrous mix of different hues of filteredlight in your drawing room on a summer afternoon.

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Orcha : A visual exploration

Orcha was essentially a visual experience.The river and the rocks,the trees on the riverside, men and women connected with the riverscene and the vast emptiness of the cenotaphs -all provided a richexperience ideal for a visual representation.The camera did notcooperate for mechanical reasons and all I got was blurred shotswhich left me in a state of disappointment and despondency. I didget a few good shots which I treasured -like the old man in theriver,the people on the bridge, the woman who sun -worshipped ,archetypal representations like men and river , women and river,father-and-son etc.

Visit to Orcha : A visual exploration

River and tree look on morning town And on the bridge and men and women With loads of firewood from the forest A bare-bodied man has sun on face. Off the bridge a wizened old man With saffron cloth drying on river rocks Bends exquisitely with age and beauty. A woman in red bathes on the river bed. In the far-line is the bank , history’s spires On the steps a woman pours water in river From a steel pot in oblation, to the sun. As the sun glistens on the shaken river River beats rocks in soft steady rhythm. Men stand on the river frozen in time Joyful women hide on the river’s rim

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Waiting to burst forth in celebration. A holy man stands tall on the rocks Drying a red loin cloth, his hair mat loose A boy silhouette crouches near the man. On the tall mound sits another holy man Against the brilliant morning sun, waiting To be captured on somebody’s digital lens.

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Even communists have their Achille’s heels

Communists die unsung ,they say. Not entirely. Communists havecomrades who sing for them when they die.Slow mournful dirgeswith a sprinkling of inspirational slogans.They carry red flags inwhite kurta pyjamas.They don’t cry but only sing rousing songs.Aweek ago when our communist relative died ,none of this happenedbecause he was a decent and friendly communist .He had carriedon his relentless struggle against the bourgeoisie over a series ofhot cups of coffee and cigarettes.In his personal life his son was hisAchille’s heel and even communists have their Achille’s heels .

Just then a certain communist saw redAnd vanished from the scene promptly.His ashes will now be spread in riversJust like India’s first Prime Minister’sIn whirring defense helicopters for fame.The fame was of course the doting son’s-It was his purple need from a hot brainFevered and full of fertile stories, storiesThat made heroes in history-addled brains,Stories that had sultry spies from enemiesWho indulged in highest skullduggeryAnd made hapless victims of patriotic IndiansWorking closely with defense ministers.When our father dies our country is with usWe go out briefly to receive condolencesOn our cell phones in somber mood.

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Who will live due to the dead and who will die for theliving?

We have heard of communists dying unsung.Of course ,there is theinfamous Pol Pot whose life had meant death to so many in order tomake life for so many .There is confusion in Pol Pot’s existence anddeath .Who is supposed to live and who will die ? May be , it is inthe numbers.Some sons of guns will die so that other sons of gunswill live.The smaller number will die so that the bigger number willlive. Confusing . When Pol Pot finally called it a life,he must havethought of this .We have no news of those who were supposed tolive happily ever after ,now that all those people obstructing theirhappiness have died :

The skull pot

I sit here on the precipice With my feet dangling In the abyss of time On the far-line I espy A pile of stacked skulls Of large circular eyes With the mountain air Hissing through them. These skulls had thoughts, When their holes were eyes, That wished no brains in them. What did the old man think, When , lying on a string cot, He saw the smile of death

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Where the banyan met the sky.

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The absence that we are

I have been trying to hit the nail on the head -to arrive at a preciseassessment of what life is like.This doesn’t seem to work somehow.Has Rilke done it -the mischievous grin I see in his literary face,soto speak,seems to suggest it. It looks like he has upstaged itsomehow. He cannot have been far wrong.Of course ,would it reallymatter to him in his present state of unbeing ? Why would he wantto be one up on life?

“The Future” by Rilke

The future: time’s excuseto frighten us; too vasta project, too large a morselfor the heart’s mouth.

Future, who won’t wait for you?Everyone is going there.It suffices you to deepenthe absence that we are.

Translated by A. Poulin

“Time’s excuse to frighten us ” – an image reminiscent of JohnDonne or Andrew Marvell. But the next image“Too vast a project”sounds more ‘modern’ ,conveying a conscious plan to mould futureactivities to the achievement of a pre-decided objective.The nextimage draws from the sensory experience of taste-”too large amorsel for the heart’s mouth”-a very graphic image.

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But the most fascinating image is “it suffices you to deepen theabsence that we are” .Just think about it : as future grows ,the pastdeepens and with it our absence.

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The cricket who mattered

At three in today morning ,when I could no longer sleep Iconcentrated on the persistent cries of the cricket which pierced thenightly silence as though it was the only sound that made up theworld.The invisible creature made such a ruckus fardisproportionate to its physical proportions that I began to think thatthe cricket was blowing itself up in the cosmic scheme of things soas to really matter and and wrest a place on par with my own placein the scheme. The creature somehow seemed to matter and stoodeyeball to eyeball to me.We looked at each other recognizing eachother’s presence.

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Vishnu’s mountains

In the Udaygiri caves we looked around for our lost God,who wasmerely sleeping in the darkness .There he lay undisturbed by theblinding beauty of the hills or by the history’s long stony silences.Was that in the 2nd century B.C. ,when the monks hid in the cavesdoing penance or moved outside the rock niches ,from where thebrown parched plains stretched interminably.

Nearer our times the white masters ,in riding hoods, roamed thesehills and the brown plains discovering our heritage ,the heritage of amilenium.Their ghosts wandered in these hills and took shelter inlonely stone buildings.

God’s mountains

Invisible are their powers, unfelt and secure The mountains lay there brown and puffing In the mid-noon sun among yellow-dropped leaves The scrolls on their walls dated back to eons Brown-skinned ancestors shrieked, ghosts, Their smelly wings flapped in cave-silences Several worn-out paths winded to forgot ruins There they stopped midway vanishing in bushes The temple bells were heard under the banyan tree The tree spread its hair reaching the steep slopes It was the clouds that brought the brown haze The sky ended up in blue torpor in penciled hills There in the wilderness shrieked British ghosts Collectors who had rested in lonely stone buildings

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Pondering deeply on history’s ghosts lying supine On broken temple foundations with missing walls There in a stony niche slept God with his eyes closed A lotus emerged from his navel, mysterious and born In fact the whole of the world burst out from there

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Where does the wind blow?

At twelve in the night I woke up from a nightmare.Outside ,throughthe window’s grill I heard the wind blowing through the trees inwaves .The pipal tree made such fine music out of its falling leaves.Where does the wind come from -the question has come back tome after such a long time ,when such questions used to come andgo like the gusts of wind through the pipal tree.

Why not search for the answer .Yes .Why not on the Yahoo.I typethe question and before the question is half formed ,the answers arealready there. The variety of the answers is no doubt fascinating butit is one answer that really captivates.

We stand on a hilltop, you and I,

A tall grassy hill where the wind blows by.

“Where does it come from?” you ask me,

“Where does it go? What does it see?”

That is how the story starts. From there, the wind takes you ona journey across land, sea and sky. It blows over people andanimals, continents and seasons, until it has circled the worldand come back again to that windy hill.

Where the boy and his mother also become part of the wind …

This ephemeral element of nature unites us through the sharing of its touch on our bodies and environments. I liked to

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think of that when I was far away from my son; it made me feelcloser to him.

http://www.cindyrink.com/wind/wind_preview1.html

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Keeping awake with Shiva

The night’s wakefulness came across the starlit skyOver the dark clump of mangoes and the court wallWith loud cymbals and scraps of movie songsAfter lanterns started flickering with halos of moths.We then kept awake with Shiva over tea after tea .The pigtailed girls had hungry stomachsYet made thin tea for for egotistical boys.Their plea for holding bats fell on deaf earsThey then jumped over charcoal drawn squaresWith their ribboned ponytails doing ding dong.A mythological movie was then thought.Mustachioed demon kings threw arrows in themWhich fought flaming maces and burning arrowsit was good which triumphed to our child’s comfortWhen we were still confused if that was indeed so.At two we yawned deeply ,convinced thatShiva had by then consumed the deadly poisonAnd got back to his penance on the mountThe blue on his throat had by then vanished.

Today is the Shiva Ratri when we are supposed to keep awake withShiva who consumes the deadly poison in the night in order to savethe world from getting destroyed by its poisonous fumes. We keepawake to express our grateful solidarity with Him.Time to remembermy childhood days when we celebrated the festival with lot of funand play.

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The river confluence

On the river bed three holy rivers meetTwo of them are in the minds of peopleThe third is a streak of undammed waterThe holy men and shop people celebrateThe confluence with drums and money jingleTheir minds meet with surprising cohesionAided by a loud-mouthed movie songHoly fires are lit and naked bodies bathedHead over water, palms cupped against sunThe holy men gyrate to prayer songsSung in kitschy styles of Mumbai pop,Their bodies smeared with ash, hair in matThe politician duly makes his touristy speechThere is everything at this holy confluenceOf religion, commerce and people politicsWith only the collective conscious missing.

While at Raipur we had gone to the Ranjim river bed on which amassive kumbh mela was to take place at the confluence of threerivers.It was planned as an extravaganza and as a Governmentpublic relations exercise with none of the religious fervour usuallyexpected in such an event. This is what happens when the politicsand religion are inter-mixed.

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The angel in red stole my clothes

The angel in red had taken my bagMy body arrived all in a piece as a guestIn the sky-land of a liquor comeuppanceAs the red bird had flown low and highIt forgot my bag’s existence in the universeBut brought this bag of bones with verseAnd would ,with an apologetic click ,reverse.My honour was truly at stake for the dayAs it ended with everything red and deadWith not even clothes for this bag of bones.

At the Indore airport I got into the Raipur flight of the KingfisherAirlines in a first experience of the Airlines owned by the liquorbaron Vijay Mallya.The red birds(nice aircrafts) together with theangels in red seemed to spread a red carpet welcome and it wasonly when I reached Raipur that I realised that my bag ,whichcontained my clothes,did not accompany this bag of bones. Twentyfour hours later,the bag was bundled into the flight once again andreachedme with duly muttered apologies.

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Coping with inner silence

My mother ,confined to her room mostly,keeps inquiring from theinner space , at regular intervals whether I have gone to the office orwhether I have come for the lunch or whether I have come backfrom office.My wife gets understandably annoyed having to reply toher from the living room from time to time.Why she does this is atfirst difficult to understand .Today I have understood her .Suddenlyit has occurred to me that when time hangs heavily on her she hasfound her own way of marking time .In the twilight years a personloses a sense of time and becomes disoriented because he is nolonger in the mainstream. You not only do not participate in thedrama of life but lose your spectator status as well . The world goeson without you and is not even aware of your existence.

My wife says my mother raises her voice even when the listener isclose by .Where is the need to shout when somebody is within aclose range, she asks.It has again occurred to me why such a thinghappens with my mother all the time.She seems to be trying tobreak the inner stillness within her , the lack of steady hum in herconsciousness .The silence is indeed terrifying and it is only byraising the pitch that one could break the silence.

The painting by Edward Munch expresses beautifully a similar kindof loneliness prompting the individual to scream trying to makehimself heard .

The scream is a shout from the existential angst of humankind . There is fire and water behind and you have already crossed the large part of the bridge .The fire is not what you are confronted with

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as it is behind you but the terror of your future at the end of thebridge .It is the hopelessness of the situation ,the meaninglessnessof a landscape which you are trying to relate to and become part ofbut suddenly realize the futility of it. No matter how much you shout,you are not heard and your scream merely echoes in the vast wildwastes of your existence .

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Creative block in

Creative block in Kolkata

My mornings ,these days,begin suspiciouslyLike remnants of the last night’s rancid dreamsWords pour forth as though they were thoughtsI stand on the edge of this nineteenth floor roomIn the same plane of existence as my eagle-friendAnd shout them into the charcoal smoke-filled airThey all come back,over dregs of my morning teaAs so many empty resolutions, so much semantics.

In the Kolkata of 2004,my mornings began with the smokestreaming from the earthen stoves and metallic crow-caws. Thedays stretched interminably with no poetry in sight .That was whenthe block was recognised and needed to be tackled .Poetry did notcome from the white skies.

When that happens, withdraw and hide.Play with the words andproduce a steady torrent of words. Words do not really matter.Because you are not going to save them for posterity. Let us seewhat the subconscious says. What you say does not matter but sayit continuously and in profusion.Streaming of art , that is what theysay.

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Spread-eagled

In 2005 I was returning ,after a fairly longish stay in Mumbai, toHyderabad and had to travel by an overnight Volvo bus which wasall I could manage at the last moment. The video fiilm shown in thebus deeply disturbed me in its treatment of a child’s rape and deathin the suburban train in full view of three helpless members ofpublic.

Spread-eagled

You lie spread-eagled,In the Volvo night busRe-living in celluloidSuburban train horrorsOf three living-dead humansWatching a twelve-year-old ,Spread-eagled ,dying of love.

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Wounds

The Return of Beauty

Things remained unsaid

Over a long gap, a wide chasm

Beauty cried in torrents

Of words bereft of thought

Till the blazing March sun

Beat the history stones

A midsummer celebration

Ensued with images galore

Beauty returned from the hills.

In 2005 I was in Hospet for two months .The prospect of being so near to Hampi filled me with exquisite anticipation. It was indeed a memorable stay in Hospet which had enriched my life and enabled me to pursue my twin passions of photography and poetry. The mountains of Hospet were full of iron ore and deep pits dug into them yielded rich deposits of iron for export .The whole country was in Hospet and trying to make filthy money out of the wounds of the beautiful mountains. China needed iron for building the Olympics

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infrastructure and our trader –investors greedily dug deep andabiding holes in the mountains and their blood trailed on the hotroads of Hospet .It was a heart wrenching experience to see uglygreed digging deep gashes into some of the most beautiful hills thatI have ever seen. Monsters of trucks rumbled in the silences of thehills and filled ancient trees with ugly films of dust making theirbarks gnarled and choking their branches.

The wounds

In the recent monsoonOur rivers felt as ifThe mountains had bledFrom fresh woundsTheir flesh has gone,Across the green seas,To the distant ChinamanTo fill out his bones.

(Iron ore exports to China in the wake of the pre-Olympicsconstruction boom have left deep wounds on our mountainscape inthe Hospet region)

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Death in the bus shelter

I was traveling from Sivakasi to Rajapalayam every day in my carand when I used to pass this bus shelter near Srivilliputtur I noticeda bearded man who was always sleeping in the stone shelter .Hewas traveling nowhere and may be, he was a homeless vagrant .Itlooked like he was not a beggar but just an aimless wanderer whohad no fixed place of his own .Every day I used to look for him whenI passed the place and always found him sleeping in the shelter andrarely ,sitting down on the stone bench entirely unconcerned aboutthe buses and the people waiting for them. I found him there on alldays and it became a part of my routine to lift the car windows at theprecise spot to look at him .Deep within I was afraid that he wouldnot be seen there one of these days and may be , would one day befound dead and no longer found in the shelter.

Sleep

The birdsong came back This time with a bearded man The sky was deep blue In the mountains and beyond And gently touching them The man’s eyes slept for long The blue in them disappeared, Above the yellowed stone shelter, Into the translucent April sky. It had rained from the white sky And he had slept and slept As if he had not woken up

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From yesterday’s deep sleep And the sleep of the day before When my car had passed. His breathing was rhythmic There was no warm life Yesterday he had existed And today his breath stirred Under the unkempt beard Tomorrow under the blue sky When my car will pass this way There will be a gray space Then my eyes will turn away I shall roll down the panes.

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The lying-in

I was in Mumbai for a short while ,attending a Corporate Centremeeting on frauds .Everything looked and sounded so familiar.Onlythe crows cawed less intensely now ,as golden sunrays entered theguest house windows in the morning through pale curtains . Theclutter of traffic appeared more bearable as the roads seemed tostretch interminably. The mystique of the old Mumbai and itsdelicious unpredictability no longer survived. Everything remainedplacid and controllable.

That day in Mumbai

My morning came back full of feisty crowsFed on Mumbai garbages and fetid sea-fishOf the harbor’s heights, not the fragrant oneThe day echoed with fallacies and lost moneys;In all it was putrefaction and beauty in tatters.The pixels were agitated by lack of sky spaces;The roads were picture-perfect, with rocks flowingAnd Haji Ali mysteries near the winding flyover.The sounds of car horns meshed with crows’ cawsWhich were continually shrill and metallic as always.Rukmini’s lying-in hospital and juice beauty parlorNested quietly in the space above the footpathThe lying-in endlessly stretched into the windowsAnd piercing the blinds ,broke into the summer sky.

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The Guava Tree

She pretends she does not limpResting a hand on the wobbly kneeHer bones could be heard creakingShe does not acknowledge this.The shopping is utterly irresistible .Her sister is gone; she is next in lineFear is bone-dry in the whites of eyesBut why talk of death, leave-taking?These people have sinister designsTo deprive her of the joy of being alive.

The last time she went shoppingShe had a minor sprain in her ankleThe doctor made such a ruckusCome to think of it, she believesShe could cook food for twentyA walking stick ? Who needed one?A thought comes like a yellowAutumn leaf riding down layers of airHer sister is gone; she is next in line .But she has a lot of work to do yetThere is so much to celebrate –

Feel the resplendent colors of cottons And the sheer joy of feeling their sheen Their smooth texture and complain of quality A Saturday shopping expedition followed by Hot snacks at the roadside restaurant

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Warm summer days of family reunions Ambient evenings of perfumed weddings.

She crinkles her eyes to peer throughThe sky-spaces of the old guava treeIn the backyard of her ancient houseIt is all the same ;nothing has changedSo much to do and so much to celebrate.

One day ,under the guava tree I pictured this old lady who lovedshopping and the countless little pleasures of life. I looked throughthe sky-spaces of the guava tree which gave her the confidence thatlife went on the usual and nothing was really lost .Near themoss-laden compound wall the realization dawned that nothing wasactually the same when the bones creaked like the withered barksof the old guava tree . She would have to limp when every one elsewas walking straight.She had to carry a walking stick -that washateful when all the people carried none and went about theirshopping jaunts like a breeze. Her sister is gone and she is next inline-the words echoed in the back of her life. Her ears stoppedlistening but the echoes continued.Every now and then she wouldcome back to the guava tree and watch life in its branches full ofsquirrels running up and down. There is a lot of shopping to do andso much to live for and to celebrate. Just then a thought comes likea yellow autumn leaf riding down layers of air :Her sister is gone;sheis next in line

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My fellow-passenger in the train

There she sat,cross-leggedWith her eyes screwed upShe seemed to take a stanceBut that was not a stanceEnergy swelled within herIn waves after wavesOnly to break, boisterously,On rocky shores of nothingness.Her cell phone rang fitfullyInterrupting pencilled shapesOf her future textile creations.Her shapes, not still forms,But frenetically moving imagesSizzled and then vaporisedIn split-second transienceEverything moved towards a stanceA fixed identity for her soul.Her fabric brooked no such thingThe struggle was worth nothingExhausted,she went off to sleep.

I was travelling from Hyderabad to Tirupati in an overnight train and as I was trying to read a book I saw there was a young lady sitting opposite to me. There was something about her which spoke of her profession which appeared to be some sort of a textile designer who ran her own business. She appeared to take a fixedness much against her volatile mind -a stance which perplexed me by its inherent contradictions.It was a constant struggle , the way she

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coped with the world and her work. There was no attempt toobserve me from the corner of her eyes although she was full of mypresence. Her energy rose and fell in waves after waves as thoughall those shapes in her mind were breaking free and nothing finallyhappened. Nothing interested her in the train and it was only the cellphone that was giving her the much needed identity.

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A dog’s death

He had come into us, running,Yelling, in crescendo of painAnd livid with fateful anger.Then all was peremptorily still.The car stopped, screechingOnly to scrape bloody fleshOff the muddy bumper; actuallyHe was chasing steel shadowsWhich had no business there.

We were travelling from Calicut to the Wyanad forests in our carwhen he had suddenly come into us .The driver applied his brakesvery skilfully to bring the car to a stop but could not save thedog.Everything seemed so sudden ;his barks trailed off quickly inthe morning silence of the highway. Actually he was chasing carswhich he hated and went down fighting them.

The gloom had persisted till we reached the forests which appearedentirely oblivious of what had happened to the morning’s dog.Theelephants decided to play truant but we saw herds of beautifuldeer.Not that we failed to sight the elephants ;it is only that we couldsee them as phantoms behind the tall bushes. Our guide ,a nativetribal ,was actually scared of the elephants and would not allow usto get down from the jeep to have a closer view of the elephants .

A photography trip to the forests of Wyanad

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First poetry had entered a dog’s lifeChasing steel shadows and gray deathThe elephants were hard to come out;They had their strong sylvan reasons.Our timid tribal guide called out to SuryaWho had his elephant feet tied to the tree.There was black fear in his beady eyes.Earlier, in the morning, beauty had beckoned;Death of a dog was but a sweat drop.There was fuzzy rain in the bamboo grove;Ponderous shadows cogitated on the lake;The sun shimmered on the solitude-beach.Poetry returned over the coconut tops.The quintessential shadows remained.

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Struggle

There was fear all over;Things happened very fast.The body quickly gave way;The sanitized walls closed in.The lone crab struggledIn a puddle of scalding waterThere were voices aroundAll happened in a split-secondWhen someone shoutedPull him out, for God’s sake;This is a mere dream.

Thank God it was a mere dream .I was lying in a hospital ,slowlydegenerating surrounded by several phantom figures .I was a crabwrithing in a pool of scalding water .Suddenly it appeared as thoughit was just a mistake and then a wonderful voice came from amongthe figures surrounding me.

Can I not avoid getting into such sticky situations ? I do not think Ican decide the type of dreams I want to have.

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Possession

The Goddess spoke, fiercely,Through white anger’s mistsThe body shouted thick-throatedA lower order goddess, surely,Cannot be all that demandingCrying for well-fattened cocks.Fear becomes the key translatingTo waves of body movements.A matter of thinned blood supplyOr a fleeting hardening of vessels,She lay there sprawled, wailing.Anger burst out of the boundsShe had crossed all body-barriersJust when sanity finally returned.A mere transient ischemic attackOr a turmeric- yellowed GoddessExtending dominion over disbelief?

That was my mother who had argued fiercely with somebodyagainst the existence and power of the lower order of Goddesses.When she came out and started walking on the road the Goddessappeared in the temple opposite and it appeared as though she didnot approve of my mother’s refusal to acknowledge her power .There she lay ,sprawled on the ground ,with anger she had neverexperienced earlier. The anger was of the Goddess who possessedher .Was it not merely another attack of ischemia ?

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Words are thoughts

Some times it is words which trigger thought and some times wordsare thoughts. Words begin as thoughts ,some times originating in amysteriously random fashion and as we go along the words triggerthoughts taking the whole process forward. The logic is defined inthe way words are born ,evolve and metamorphose into thoughtsagain.

It is funny that I when I began writing the poem given below I had’ntthe faintest idea of where I would end up :

Refusal

I know you have said that enough

In the day’s heat and moon’s eclipse

In the horizon I looked far enough

And deep in the tree’s silences

The leaves rustled in the night.

What can you do again and now

Unless art has not left here as yet

And senses still matter to the mind.

In the hollow of my downy back

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Your after-being remains as refusal

Senselessness hurts in my fingers

As though my senses are conscious

And are offended deeply by refusal.

Honestly the subject evolved in the interplay of thoughts and words.Words have a flourescence of their own ,independent of theunderlying thoughts. As words progress the thoughts keep evolvingin a manner entirely unpredictable and intriguing too. The logic ofwords forbids moving out of pre-determined structures imposingunwarranted control on word flow but poetry enables freedom fromthem.

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Existence

Here a talking man is sleeping,His arms akimbo, feet in the air.Then were wild gesticulations,Sweat on brow, fire in the eyesNow vacant and unconnected.He no longer exists in spaceBut he had happened in timeWhatever begins shall remain.

I can feel Ramachandrarao in the air.There he is, wildlygesticulating and making a science point or two.Yes .It was sciencethat primarily bothered him but more by way of an overwhelmingobsession with detail. He has still not gone from amongst us:hisabsence is felt as though it was just a presence and not a lack of it.

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Poetry in Mandsaur

Mandsaur does not boast of any ancient temple or fort ,while thetown dates back to the Ramayana times .Ramayana times is ofcourse speculation arising out of the shared consciousness of thelocal people who believe that their town was where Mandodari,Ravana’s wife belonged and Ravana ,although disliked as amegalomaniac demon king elsewhere in the country,is loved andrespected in Mandsaur. Poetry had been hard to come upon but inthe end I coaxed a poem out of my experience in the temple ofPasupathinath which was replete with myth and local lore.

Poetry is late

Poetry is now the breeze rustling in the tree After the temple tank’s mossy stillness. On consciousness had luminously arrived The phallus god, in brown beauty- hues And cyclical eight faced phallus ,in turns, Tranquil-white and angry-red in stone eyes. Polished now as God ,a washer man had used it In rhythmic beats, all for beating laundry. We have our myths, carefully polished Over Time’s washed stones of the riverbed Our accumulated minds enormously meshed As a haystack of shared consciousness. Our gods have uneasily existed all these days With spirits who have to be driven out From darkly lonely houses and fearful men. On the hillock pallid ghosts come haunting

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In moonlit houses amid systolic blood-chants You know our god is fear ,not rain’s beauty Or lonely jungles with the fall of cascades I keep thinking, while my glass eye twitches For brown beauty and pixelated praise.

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Images

Disjointed and derelict imagesFuse into my flowing consciousnessA dimpled beauty selling hotel spaceA nest-builder mother-crow peckingGreen young mangoes hangingAlongside April’s burning morning sunSuddenly a kurta-clad grey-haired womanBursts upon the conscious with abrupt violenceHer comforting presence in the airplaneComplementing,by her side,another womanWho is sleep-walking,on her way,Her head in her hands,to take chargeOf a mere body which once throbbedIn the deepest recesses of her own bodyDisparate images , wide apart in time ,Flow into my sleep and then out of itSometimes straying into my wakeful self

In Kolkata for a two-month stay ,I began with images I had carriedwith me from Hyderabad ,the images of a colleague’s tragic loss ofa son to the waters of a Yamuna canal in Roorkee .Not wanting tohimself bring back the body of the twenty year old son to theirHyderabad home this gentleman gave the task to the mother whohad to travel all the way to Roorkee with another female colleague,her head swirling in misery at the thought of having to take chargeof the son’s body.

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Crows ,pebbles and pots

I have always tried to re-live my life of a six-year old hesitatinglyentering the world,the life of the first school days because thethought of it has filled me with unexplained happiness. Then ,oneday,I tried to fuse together the disparate images and sensoryexperiences which existed then in my mind, as recalled today,tomake a poem :

My childhood

The midsummer tin-roofed alphabet-school Burst with thirsty crows and earthen pots Long-gowned smoky-eyed phantom-teachers Guided tiny fingers along chalked letters The water glistened telltale in the bottom Waiting for the crows to bend and breathe Deeply over their gently moving reflections The pebbles would take long time to drop In the meantime a squeezed citrus leaf Mingled its delicious smell perfectly with The lazy crow’s caw on the branches At the altar of the church I tried to find The fragrance of my life’s beginning In the sandal paste and burnt incense Our pond smelled of the aromatic chemistry Of wind over water and long lotus stems At midnight dark burglars made oval holes In the neighbor’s house with a shovel’s thud In the afternoon scary policemen arrived

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Hand-in-hand with ebony-backed thieves The ghostly tamarind brooded in the night Little tomato plants shone red in the corner Our petite pig-tailed girl played peeved wife On long summer nights the circus band played The stars flickered in the chinks of the tent.

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Loving the shadows

I loved to talk to rolly-polly Rajeswari whenever I used to come toIchapuram during the college vacation. She made such fine upmasfor me full of microscopic mustards . I sat looking into her eyes ondusty evenings as she cut her tomatoes for the evening’s dinner .She did not love her husband who was such a fine husband, albeitadvanced in years, and a fine printer . It was such an impossiblesituation , her husband being several years older than her and withnothing between them except polite conversations about what shemade for the evening dinner. She wanted him , however, in her ownway ; he needed nothing from her except watch him silently as hesat on the floor eating his dinner. She looked forward to my visitsbecause she wanted to watch me eating her upmas . It was funnythe way the whole thing worked out . She wanted her husband,sometimes ,to tell her that he needed her as also tell him that shewanted a baby from him . It was a no-win situation because hewanted to tell her that it did not really matter if she did not need him.

Their destinies together unfolded as both sat dusting thousands ofworn out print heads which they did not need for any current printjob. For the first time I experienced the utter futility of humancommunication :

Rajeswari

“Her upmas were so delectable Albeit with just a tinge of sadness Her mangalasutra had a thread of black

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Which rose and fell as though it was gold Her eyes were pools of sad knowledge Which brimmed over kajal-lined contours Her tumescent tummy bulged with Imagined babies not one but two or three One would blame it on flatulence Induced by late night indulgence Her man was no prince riding on a white horse He was a fine printer nevertheless Who had a way with lithographic typefaces .

So that is that. The jasmines in her hairShone against the darkness of her backShe smiled like a princess from amongWorn out print heads and squeezed out ink-tubesWhat if the printer is on forty-wrong sideHe was a fine husband and a caring friend(Rajeswari ,have you taken your B-complex?)At his age shyness didn’t become himHe wanted to tell her what lay encryptedOn the flatstones of their foreheads(The lettering wore off due to ravages of time)He shared a printers affinity with BrahmaOne thing emerged very clearly and unmistakablyThe patter of little feet could be heard distinctly.

Her husband could never tell her this His drooping eyes said it all , however. How would she know that a few years later The whites of his eyes would focus on her

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And the horror of it all dawned on her He , the expert proofreader that he was, For once misread the inexorable writing On the tombstones of their destiny ..”

One day her husband came home excited full of news of a newprinting contract. His eyes flashed in excitement although the newcontract brought no promise of immediate monetary gain to himpersonally. Rajeswari looked at him with inexplicable disinterest. Hewanted to assure her that everything was fine between them .Butwhere is little Krishna the patter of whose little feet could still beheard amidst the din of the printing machines ? I remembered theshadows that played on the mud walls of the Sompeta house as thepetromax light hung to the roof waved gently in the breeze . When itrained little rain-insects hovered in a luminous halo around the lightand their exaggerated shadows played on the mud-walls .

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The death of a leader

Taraknath ,the well-read Union Leader who had risen to the top postof the All India Bank Union General Secretary had a brilliant recordof a leader with a vision .At the end of his career he could not carryeverybody with him and he had an uphill task in keeping his flocktogether.Then ,one day,while making an impassioned speech to hisTirupati followers he clutched at his heart and collapsed in themeeting itself. I looked at him in Hyderabad staring through theglass casket in which he had been placed to enable people to paytheir tributes to him.

The death of a leader

Fight to the finish ,whose?He frowns from the frozen inertnessOf the flower-laden glass-casketYesterday he clutched at his heartTrying to make his pointHe never made it anyway.

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Woman, dog and sun

In December last year ,I lived in the Staff College campus of myBank in Hyderabad for a week .The weather was just fine, totallyconducive to long morning walks in the sylvan surroundings of theCollege. The search for beauty went on ,with the glass eye in towand several objects bathed in warm glow behind reddish-tingedrocks. On the hillock ,where I headed in my walks, a brown dogstood waiting to be photographed as though that was the moment ofits glory.

A photographer’s “doggereal”

A breeze blows on the fallen leaves, Soft- crunching under footfalls Then thoughts flow in a pageant Their slowly crawling centipede Is so much like a human chain Their poetry exists in fine words, Their rhythms beating as in life Their symmetry really pretty. Beauty-words gently fall like December mist dripping from leaves. Our own transience feels like birds In the blueness above the treetops. In the summer sky’s blue torpor We keep stretching our vision Until tiny luminous worms swim In pools of tears in raised eyes. Here ,a dog becomes a mere image

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On the rock where it belongs, In joyful photo-luminescence.

On some days I went on long walks on the jogging track and I triedto capture the rising sun flooding the rocks and the bushes near thehillock . Sudha, my colleague accompanied me one day and as Itried to capture her on my lens she looked as though she waswalking into the sun:

Sunrise

The sunrays touched her and went upPenetrating the trees and then the skyI saw that happening ,often ,behind herA gentle yellow light touching her warmlyThis morning the sun came down quicklyFrom behind the wall, through the boulders,Bouncing off the golden border of her sariFlooding my inner glass eye with light.

The rocks were strangely beautiful against the rising sun as thoughthey breathed in the beauty of the sun.

The photographer’s quest

First, beauty seemed to come back In capillary-like ,bird-flying transience As the orange orb came up shaking In grey rocks and tentative leaf-ends It is the sleeping rocks that glowed

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Their contours passionately etched Against white houses in blue spaces. We had tiptoed all the way to the hillock As the trees looked down on us,clinging, Their foliage witness to our fecund follies. Our thoughts remained in their bounds Our images shreds of a few fluffy clouds The search ended in several fiery pixels.