Summer of '99

We had also summers of our own
Riding the bus to the town
From our idyllic green
We had boxes of tin
And our very own guitarman
A microphone rusty stand
And songs in our lips...
We had summer of '99!

We boarded the first vacant bus
From the gate of our campus
Morning had been soft and temperate
We got comfortably sunk on window seats...
And watched the city waking up
Andrew nodded his head and winked just...
'its okay dude...we are going to win Casablanca...we must...'
He had such a positive vibe to spread
The street by the park was not till red...
Another one of us...had notes on papers...
Copies of our midsummer night's labour...
And when we had taken the stage...
Monitors placed like old sleepy sages...
The first strumming long pressed...
Jeans dusty had all the unrest...
And souls we were to burst...
We were surely having the hallucinogenic curse...
But we broke forth strong and wild...
We painted visions weak and mild...
And grew graded by the pedals tuned...
We shook legs for damsels with hairs colored and pruned...
O! We had such a summer of '99!
White columned Scottish gates...
We had overrun performance dates...
Took cabs and metro rides to the fringe
Of the city where yellow mixed with pink smooth cream...
We had also Adamic decadence...
We found rhymes in the most banal existence...
We had summer of '99!
We lost through pocket holes golden dimes...
And recovered haply to chase a note through Mirza Ghalib street...
At Reynold's we shopped copper and silver strings...
We had our own summer of '99!
O! We had summer with plectrums on fingers fine...

who am I to show those visions?

Who am i to show you those
little flakes of morning's gold
falling and covering up a strawladen hut
who am i to show you that?

an old locomotive arriving from the west
people descending with bags and huge suitcase
and a cartman greasing his cart's wheel
his face blackened and smile on his face still...
a crow perched on a tin roof
witnessing bedlam arriving throwing dust by horse's hoofs...
a little boy running through
the cloud of white smoke
the locomotive into the derelict station blew...
a range of distant overlooking hills
the gradual change of a village's trance like feel...
the transcendence of civilisation
from serene stillness to a busy motion...
but who am i to put them into you?
these visions on my heart grew...
over the years...the passage of history...
a peepul tree with leafy mystery...
summers,winters,springs and autumns...
an anthology of laughter and tears...
human struggles with arrows and spears...
and also of nature's pristine best
a settlement by His providence blessed...
but who am I to show these?

amico di anima...

Hey amico di anima!
I might drift
and you might take the tide so swift...
and we might live seperate
but we can't afford hate...
we can't simply...
For when we are so attached by strings...
we might fly to distant lands
you to the known chambers of hearts forlorn
me to a port where fishermen's song
transmute the evenings into silvery white...
Hey! amico di anima!
we can never lose the sight...
of birds flying back home...
of sun dipping her redness strong
into waters of ganges or volga...
Hey! we are not accursed...
We got no anathema...
Are we not souls tied by strings?
forever stretching...elongating?
You might choose in your way
carpe diem theme
carpe florem...
I might on a white page
work out a neopolitan theorem...
But where's the hate? where's the lack?
strings are mutually made to slack...
by us...
our choice of words...
and silence befitting the journey afterwards...
still...
Hey! amico di anima...
Where's the anathema?

you take me again...

you take me again to the breeze
on the cliff
and the green seen from above
like a carpet...
you take me again to the smell of incense wicks
and strips of white flags full of peace...
and the sombre gongs of bells
reverberating wide and far
sweeping the hills and the plains... you take me again to the beginning of an end
to that road which stops so sudden
to reveal the untraversed life beyond the sight...

you take me again to board a flight
slow taxing down the tarmac
and propellers rolling fast
taking in the air and the system of exhaust
blowing hot at the rear to give me the thrust...
and...I take off...

folding up my legs
severing the last touch,
to the soft generic earth...
I take off...

'what do you really know of me?'

What do you really know of me?
Amadore once told me...
and set into rhyme in a murmur soft
he told me about what life to him brought...

"In search of life
I have wandered to hills and valleys
to pubs and cities... to aunt Sally's...
in search of life I have done so many things
dived into the coldest lake
to suffer hypothermic freeze...
Wrapping myself up in sheepskin tight
In a moist cave I spent a whole night...
what do you really know of me?
I have made rope from intestine
and slept on dead grass
in a burnt wood of pine...
Camikazi knot having tied to a boulder of a cliff
I jumped into the fearsome deep...
and fell the breezy weightless me
I fell straight to the blue green sea...
Survived several deadly crash
on my back got whippings of lash...
three diagonal marks of pride
A survivor of a hurricane ride...
Rolling over a downy slope
hitting shrubs and bushes of thorns
pains I coped...

And then met a youngish maid
in a whispery tone who to me said
'Settle down kid...settle down...
You've raised a storm and people do frown...
At your reckless flamboyant life
you got panache but lack a wife...'

So I thought stopping for a while
Why not change the adventurous file
of my life so much under fire
why not settle with a flat tyre?

After a few years a baby was born
with blue eyes he like a starlet shone...
in our cottage on a hill
beside the stream where fish danced till
the evening set in like a curtain of haze
i stopped climbing and jumping...
grew only maize...
and toiled hard from morn to night
and we owned a golden sight...
Soon the boy grew strong
and the bout of adventure came back and I longed...

Oneday giving them the land and my purse...
I set out early called by stars...
And days and months and years slipped away and slid
I journeyed again to the unpredictable bid
of Nature calling me to come out in the open...
Where strong dreams are with music woven...
What really do you know of me?
I have leapt into the blue green sea...
Straight from a cliff a Camikazi knot
That's my story to put it short..."

Saying this old Amadore
Took a bottle of Chardonnay and poured
a big shot down his throat...

sms to you ...when you are so morbid...

Writing a sms...
to assure you...
O Yes!
There's a lot between us
and then there's nothing as such... dear...

why you so shaken and feared?
don't you know we all are of His?
The Man who taking on his arms us gave the first kiss?
and made us to smile ,weep and cry...
and failed us so often so that we could try
harder n better with all might;
He who gave us the First Golden Arrow of Light,
Gave us the pains and sufferings too
as rare gifts so that we could burn and glow...
He gave us all to grow metal true
burnt ,hammered and thrown into blacksmith's hearth
He showed us how molten gold erupt from volcanic earth...

so...dear...
have faith on life and Him
And be filled with liquid dreams...

twilight sun...

the twilight sun...
without tease or the feel of burn
smooth dying and so benign
bestowing little men and women with candid fatelines...
simple...lucid and thing so round
as if to lift the waves of water beyond the bounds
of embankment so solid like rock
the sun going to sleep...
a perfect egg yolk...
carrying the secrets of birth perhaps...
and the scent of time elapsed...

our lost neighbourhood...

our neighbourhood had its own flavour
like soft kisses of an ancient lover...

the mornings woke up with simple sounds-
Little miss Lily singing her song
her fingers on the harmonium
and the sweeper in blue uniform
brooming the street-
The two working an uncanny rhythmic feat...
the rustle of dry leaves being swept
and the shrill song of Lily almost wept...
Then was the gardener's fast scythe
cutting through the air's chill that would soon die,
And there was an inimitable Mrs.Bose...
in her dressing gown and peeping hose
buying from her window white fresh rose
from the flowergirl too early arrived
catching ferry to town at the first tide...

Mr.Lahiri would be seen walking home
followed by stray dogs some
to whom he would gently give away
broken bits of biscuits on a silver tray...

Dhoot Singh,our only milkman
would knock the doors and place cans...
his healthy body glistening in sweat
his belly hanging a bit overweight...

Little boys cycle borne...
would shout and laugh aloud
riding fast round and round
down the lane and the mound
of grass and dried up weeds
to be blown oneday again to the fields...

The night watchman would plod weary
humming a story of a moon fairy...
oblivious of the sunrise...and the increased level
of noise...shouts...songs...cries...domestic decibel...

Our neighbourhood woke up thus
last two decades that passed...
each morn that embraced night
each night that broke to a flight
of jobs,studies,cradlesleep and birth
of death coming as the most frequent visitor...

the atonement...for you and me...

you sent me bouquets
and warm smiles...
and hugs and kisses...
in forms physical and metaphysical...
in shapes cool as a glass jar
of clean pure water...
scorched me dying of thirst knowing you well;
in alphabets so vegetable ones...
and like fruits on trays
glistening like the sky of noonday...
in pathways and alleys
in shirts mauve colored ones -Allen Solly's...
in hymns and harmonies...
in pandemonium...cacophonies...

but why?

you needed an atonement I guess...
a balm to calm your senses...
you needed that...
an atonement...flat!

I needed that too...
urgent and straight...
but i don't need to send you anything for that...
instead...i found a word...
Evolution!
That's my choice.
Period.

the piano teacher mine...

Last few minutes
before I took up the pen
i think i was with her
my piano teacher...

i think because i am not sure
she had left the job many years ago...
but still on an evening such
i am sometimes reminded of her touch
on the reeds white and black,
and her heels on pedal making mild taps...
and she telling me stories
of princesses and wonderous fairies...

sometimes she would allude the tune
with a vision of a changing sand dune...
then another time she would not talk
her music set a vintage 1869 on rocks...

then there were times for her fingers to evoke
a scene from Alice in wonderland like a stroke
of paintbrush creating a scene...
she by her music strange things did bring...

once she taught me how waves of ocean could lap up
on the shores of our living room by music soft...
and then she showed me once a corn field
only by music how swayed and filled...

'Music' she told me once in a whispery tone
'should be felt and heard all alone...'

God knows what happened afterwards
I found music in every thing that appeared...
a tram making tring tring through the mist,
a cycle bell having pure music unleashed,
a ferryman calling his mate in rhythmic tone,
a clock ticking in a silent hall alone...
a boy mugging a multiplication table
of nineteen, with a musical feel...

i caught then on,music everywhere,
from piazza dante to college square...
i felt music forever like a downpour
on my head...heart... and I got lured...
to music and of course to her
my only one piano teacher...

Hope you are not ignorant of those little things...

Hope you are not ignorant
of things that used to stir
you few years back...
those little insignificant things?
like that evening breeze?
and the play of light and shade
on the smooth road of velvet?
and that copper colored flakes
of paint dusted off the board of a dream?
Hope you are not ignorant
of little things...
insignificant ones like the taillight that blinked
twice before slipping into the dark?
and that meadowy place where gnats and glowworms convened
a seminar
on relationships how get trimmed
by passage of time...and mutation of space...
Hope you have not forgotten the taste
of wine...a residual chance...
a night of people engaged in dance?

You might have forgotten every thing about me...
But...how can you be ignorant of memories of me?
And that egg yolk moon?
and the parade of stars?
and that afternoon show ticket
of a play...a farce?
and the flower girl from whom you bought
three different blossoms in traffic jam caught?

so she arrives...like the season of spring...

sometimes...she arrives
wearing the newest green
under the blue sky of spring
as if she comes to wait
for me by the river straight...

she comes sometimes with a shade
cool breezy flakes of white sand dropping on my head...
like a pure dream of a land unseen but heard often
in lores of forgotten youth that soften
adult hearts with drops of moist dew...
sometimes she arrives with stories few...
wearing her newly bought green
waiting for me at the onset of spring...
by the river and the mound of sand
white mica laden -a sparkling land...

And I dream of radha and krishna
tunes of flute flooding my ears
and colored pollen grains on my painted vision...
soft...benign...on a pleasing morn...
sometimes she arrives like a tree alone...
wearing her best sunday green...
smelling so much of flowery spring...

Ah! I spent life half for such a day...

After a short spell of shower
when the sun came out
knew he heard my prayer
for he smiled surely looking at me
and those flowers bloomed for the swarm of bees...
and the road still populated by leaves
yellow fallen chaffeurs of dreams
smiled too with sparkle on their blades...

Ah! I spent half life for a day
like this when the streets and alleys lay
awake yet in a restive trance...
and the drenched soft and fresh sun
playing with the trees...
and the afternoon chapter of a breeze...
kissing him to be gay...
Ah! I spent life half for such a day...

Being in a time warp...

Well...
When one is in a time warp...
One sees history written on walls...
History of struggles...deprivation...
Starving faces of a whole generation...
Hanging footloose on the board
Blood on sickles...spades and rusty swords...
Trains departing ...a snail's progress...
Torn dhoti... Muddy shirt... Fallen lace...
Fire on thatched roof... Shelter under a tin shack...
Children running... Women falling there slack...
Bulging smoke tear gased eyes on burn...
A road emptied closed for no return...
An alley of the noon filled with sounds of heavy boots...
A shop's shutter broken for an awesome loot...
Three pronged candleposts blackened by molten tar...
A body lying beside a flower fully charred...
Posters slogans full of Gandhi speak...
Great kolkata carnage posted in petitions writ...
Flagmarch of olive green tattooed cars...
Religion ushering a fitting doomsday curse...

Well...
When one is in a time warp...
All scenes of sins fall sharp...
Before eyes like witnessing live
Broadcast with sombre voice fully televised...

Pea soup sky and the breeze...

The slice of sky this morning
Looked like peasoup...to me
And the sun...like egg's yolk...
In the middle... afloat...

Peering out...
Felt the breeze on flow
There was something in the wind...
As if the lovely maiden Spring
Had sent her sister here...
She was swift...breezy...fair...
She must have started to work
To sweep the street...
Upon which some people walked...
Found leaves from different trees...
Falling running jumping...
As if they were happy to find Spring's sister...
As she had come long time after...

The breeze had the southern smell...
Of seeds...spices...coffee plants...
And valleys and plateaus...
Reminder of luncheon at Le Chateau...
Plates placed on tables of wood...
Glass jars on which with honey stood...
And fruits and mango juice...

The sky looking pea soup...
Made me a day to lose...

The wait at the library...

The greco roman columns...
The ceiling white with brown colored beams
Crisscrossing like figures from geometry text...
The long old rock solid tables...
All smell so much of them...
The great men and women...
Who chose the way to a vocation...
So self possessed thing...
And nourishing too...

Here time even leaves all her work....
She doesnot go to ring the bell...
Or hurries around...for no good...
Here time also reads...
And sometimes she writes her mind...
Her wishes and secret desires
Which she scarcely let out...

Yes!
Waiting at a library...
Is like living in with Time...
A different version of hers...
Who is so quiet...
Rooted...
A meditative soul perhaps
Of a restless being...

Dolce vita

With the sun on back
Have you ever sat
On a cliff...
Overlooking the city
As if in a cauldron set deep?

With the breeze soft
Playing with the ends cropped
Of hair so indulgent like a mother
Have you ever looked up the canvas
Of the blue so pleasant and true?

Well...
I have once...
Got that chance
Many many years ago perhaps...
Almost forgotten like picture under dust...

But...
I know that was the moment...
Perhaps my only one so far
My dolce vita...sure!

The morn...the sun...and my heart...

Chanced to catch you
By the window of the morn
The sun all over your face kid...
Infused with absentminded feeds
Of last night's dream of yours
Of characters from your comic books...
Or perhaps you were still not out of sleep
For your eyes looked not restless...
You just sat lethargic on the bed
And savoured the first light of the day...
Chanced to catch you like a poem
Fresh...sweet...dropped from heaven...
So full of divine trance...
Catching photons as they danced...
Passing through the fog and mist
Caught you kid perfect...sunkissed...
By the window of the morn
Sitting and watching the world alone...

what can i say about that man?

what can i say about that man?
my being to him i owe
and as time passes on we grow...
together...separate...
alone yet joined...

he watches the television set
sitting on his bed erect...
and sometimes lying silent...
watching the world on flow
in colors...in colorless violence...

he has seen so many events...
the birth of a nation...times tensed...
cries of youth soaked in blood...
villages disappearing under water of a flood...
marks of barbed wires on shoulders blue...
heavy stomping he heard of leather shoes...
the fall of a man riddled by bullets...
he had read news of Mussolini's arrest...
seen he had how vultures dawned
upon the roofs of a blackened town...
one night he had felt how the earth shook bad
another morn he witnessed processions sad...
black badges on shirts...against deaths
by molotov cocktails purely handmade...

what can i say of this man?
growing crow's feet and wrinkled tan
over his face...so aged by sights
and sounds of numerous fights
and struggles of a whole generation...
and unending queues of teeming millions...
before shops which rationed food
and grocery supplies which were never good?

a poster of a book...

somenights are just like that...
I walk by her side
under the moonlight
and the shadows of buildings come out to play
upon me...her face...as the streets silent stay
witness to our nocturnal stroll...