The Immersion

Bedecked with all the jewels and flowers,
She came to the ghat at last...
Her face vermilion smeared,red,
As if the sun had set on her countenance...

The lonely cobalt ball of light,
Far away from the blackened sky,
Led her through the sooty water...

A chilly vacuum evades the space,
As Time dripped by through the fingers folded,

'Adieu!'-cried the pious and the plebeian,
I only tried to gulp down sadness
Through my narrow, singed throat...

The Epitaph

Here lies a body
Whose mind once possessed
An obsession-thick and sticky...

One fine morning,
Under a trance,
The body jumped off
The balcony-third floor!

And fell and fell
But failed to stop the Fall...

Now,
That you're standing, stupefied,
Infront of the obelisk,
The body-confused and shocked,
Feels a strange premonition...

You are the next to follow,
And thousands will follow you soon!

(published previously in The Statesman, 20 feb,2001)

Hey You!

Hey you!
Don't you know
That it's time to go?
Leaving all
That you reap and sow?
And giving all
That you keep in tow?
And wiping out
Your dreams and woe?
And cleansing off
Your filth filled shoe?
Hey You!
Don't you know
-As you come, so you go?

Thousand years

Of Nature I sing my praise, my lord!
For all the events of history will die,
As the morns, the nights deify;
For the fire, solace in ashes finds,
And in the annals, the worm resides;
For the flower in lover's hand dies,
And the stream, in desert belies;
For all the harms and wrongs we do,
Void will eat our nothingness too;
She grows and grows till the doom,
'Thousand years a little room!'

Had I...

Had I the strength,
I could have caused
The rebirth of a whole nation;

Had I the power,
I could have throttled
God to yield;

Had I humility,
I could have cried
a whole decade seeking blessings;

Had I ego,
I could have risen
like Satan from Leviathan...

boat song ii

A boat is all i have,
to go about the ocean wild;
a boat weak and old,
that has all the scars of an aged soul;
A boat is all we need to have,
to glide through the foam and surf...

the boat song

once i caught a boat, empty...
devoid of any occupant,tossing up and down
in a stream with no one around,
it danced and swayed, in its own way...
i gazed at it and found me a boat
in a stream cool and still