she, the traffic post....

'Sometimes it is good to be back...
To the usual ways after a drift...
It so good sometimes...to be back on the road...
Hitting it hard with all muscles raring to go...
Speed man speed!
It is good to rev up the engine strong
And speed through the road...
As lightposts whiz by like lightning rods glimmering for sparse moments...
And the stray leaves blown away...
Blown away by the gust of exhaust...
And the silence being broken by the purring of the cylinders running incessent
And faces going away so quick...'

He thought as he sped through-
Till  a traffic signal, which forced him to stop...
A traffic signal red...
A traffic signal with blue tee and black jeans staring curiously straight into his eyes...
He looked and smiled light...
The curious pair of eyes did not smile back...but they scanned him and his machine...
Scanned and scanned...
Till she grew tired of scanning;

He moved right his handle bar...thirty degrees...thinking to navigate her and the post...
But the signal was still red and she was still there...
Looking at him-
Asking him a question...
Leaving him a cue...
'Why?'
'Why dear?'
'Why you move so reckless? don't you care for life?'

It took him exact 4.8 seconds to realise the cue...
At the 4.9 th second he nodded...
He nodded in affirmative, as if he was submitting...

Just then the signal went green...
Green...

Affirmative...

O my black night! my love...

O my black night!
I love you so!
Cause you are the only one so pure and unconditional...
You're the One!

O my darkest day!
You're my heart's joy!
Cause you're the only One
Who come to me everyday!

O my bleakest thought!
You're my favourite...
Cause you come to me
To remind me of the brightest ;

O my singed heart!
You're the blessed one...
For you show me the shore
Where beauty and Love galore!

O my wildest mind!
You're my estranged love...
Cause you make me do things
Which no one can!

the Guru...

So, by chance I met him...
Near the river Koshi...sitting cross-legged as any sadhu should entomb oneself...
Eyes closed...
Palms rested blithely on folded knees...
I looked at his face...calm...
As calm as the river flowing by...
Calm with little ripples...
I looked at his face...same eyebrows...same lips...same square jawbones...
He appeared a bit frail though...

The last time I saw him...some ten years back...
He had worn a pair of jeans faded...
And in all probability a fag was dangling from his lips...then...
He just nodded me farewell...
I had  heaved a sigh perhaps, adjusting my dupatta over my heavy bosom...
I had flashed a faint smile perhaps...
Perhaps I had checked my tears...
Only my black eyeliner got a bit smudged...I remember!
But I had hidden all my sighs...quite efficiently...under the garb of my dimpled smile...
He had stared at me for a while perhaps...
Stared hard...
I had remained impassive...outwardly... though God knew...how the storm had raged then...within...
How my two unruly arms had tried to defy my orders of brain...
To embrace him hard!
To hold him tight over my empty bosom!
O! what a pain it had been-
To let him go...
To let love remain unrequited!

Now....
After ten long years,
I, by providence, discovered him...
And on the very first glance
Realised that sadhu under the tree by the river was my known man...
The man who  had left me giving no pains external...
The man who left me flooded by dreams and unforgiving memories!
I thought...
I should pounce on him and wake him up from his deep slumber!
I thought I should jerk his unconsciousness out!
I thought I should plant a kiss on his thin lips...full of my pentup lust and love...
But
I just thought...
Never garnered the courage to face his eyes opened...

Me thought...
I should click a photo of my man sitting under the tree by the river Koshi...
Without jeans and cigarette...
In an orange loin...and bare chest...

the violinist...

She stood up like a swan...
Her hair was caught at the nape...
She stood under the arclight white..
Her black flowing gown looked like a curtain flying...
Then she took the bow and rested it delicately on the strings...
Just like a feather touching a harp...
She closed her eyes...feeling each of the strings...her companions for ages...
Her friends of sadness and beauty...
She knew how to touch them alive!
Her bow...her strings...
Her wooden violin polished...
Then she started playing with them-
Playing as if she was born to play!
Playing as if she knew exactly how to bring senses to strings so taut!
She played...
And I could see her
Almost stirred up inside...
Her eyes closed carried all of her mind and heart...
Her sweet eyebrows twisting up and down with every move of her hand and the bow...
Her whole body became a song...
I saw her...
I saw her through...

why so?

why so dear?
Why we become cats when we can actually be lions?
Why?
With the Nature, being the most benign mother, smiling at us with all her beauty so gloriously presented-
For us to be engaged with...
One can only be lions and roam free...
Understanding every bit of one's freedom...
Delimiting oneself from being mere copycats!
We are all lions and lionesses...aren't we?
Bravehearted, fearless...
Or we might be like THE TYGER
Of Blake!
Even better...than a lion...
The Tyger....
God's creation...'fearful symmetry'
And be the Lamb as well...
Standing for all that is meek and mild...
And be the Tyger still!

walk...

After slogging so hard for days, dear...
Come...lets go out for an evening walk through the boulevard...
Come...
Just hold my hand...giving me your warmth and taking from me my moist soul...
Let us walk...
As if we are out to kiss the earth
And let the earth kiss us back...

Come...dear...
Let the walk be our only talk...
Holding on to each other's hands...
We just walk
Through the boulevard so absurdly beautiful
In this evening...

We just walk dear-
After slogging so hard for days
Missing several hours like these...
Just we walk and never talk...

on Dali...

He stood before the gigantic frames capturing moments of the frenzied painter's artworks...
'How unnerving!'
He thought and looked at the Persistence of Memory
'So liquid...the Time...almost slipping off from the edge of the table and that tree branch leafless...'
He thought and strolled to another...
'My god! Young virgin...so deconstructed?'
He asked the empty hall which echoed back his words in no time;
Then came to view the best of the lot...
At least, he considered it the best,
Though he was always aware he had never been the best of art critics...
Infact he felt belittled by the gigantic works-
Reaching up to the ceiling of the hall...
Spread as wide as a big projector screen...
Jesus on a three dimensional crucifix...hanging light in the void...

He looked and looked...
Till he thought he was just one of the minions
Standing at the feet of the God...

the Time...

She had never felt tired of running round and round...
She had been doing that for the last few thousand years...
Running with perfection unattainable!
She knows that she is invincible...
The undefeated champion of everything...
The most experienced of all...
The wisest...
The coolest...
The luckiest...
The bravest...
The most beautiful one...
The best thing ever conceived of...
The truest form of moments, so fleeting...

She knows what preceded whom...
She knows by her hands, so easy!
She knows-algae was born on earth at 2.08
And the first sexual reproduction in the truest form had happened exactly at 6.08...
And how the Homo sapiens and Homo erectus came to rule the roost...
And that too at 11.58.43...

She knows all the facts...
And fictions too!
She knows how the poet next door fell off to slumber at his desk, leaving unfinished work on pages...
She knows how the little girl giggled when after a long time she saw her pet dog getting well...
She knows...
Being the most perplexing kind of dimensions accountable...
Being the Time...

lets go to the wild...once again...

Lets go to the wild...once again dear...
Leaving behind whatever we did in between,
Just zipping 'em up in wastepaper basket...
And cleanse our past...
Cleanse ourselves...

Lets go to the wilderness...once again...dear...
Remember the way we caught salamanders from the creek?
Remember?
How we built tepee using our black waste bag?
How we light up fire...the most fragile thing, using frictional force on two bamboo sticks?
How we survived the roughest terrain and climatic conditions just using our intuitions?

O how blessed the times were!
O how good we spent the time in wilderness, dear!
How good!

I remember distinctly how once in a forest near the carribean sea...
We ripened green bananas by putting them into hotwater spring!
How we cooked our dinner, mere snails and prawns...
And how well did we survive...
In the wilderness!
In moist and heat...
In rains and the Sun...

As good as all weather friends...
Good forever...

the motorist...

'I swear by Wankel engine...
And if you ask me why...
The reasons are purely technical
Rotary engines are smoother than those piston types pumping in and out constantly...'
Saying these our motorist stopped
Cause he had more important business to attend-
His fag...

It was burning low all the way
But with him talking too much without attending to it;
The fag, being the most whimsical seeker of kiss...
Decided to die down,
Putting across a serious warning to our motorist
Reminding him sternly almost, in his symptomatic manner,
That he and all his rotational stuff will be seriously impinged by lack of the intoxicating air
That the motorist would die for...eventually...

So our motorist looked at the tip of his fag,
Which looked charcoal
Instead of being in its customary color-Red... as invigorating as a lipstick...
So...
He brought his lighter out...
Another rotary kind thing with external combustion...
No cylinder, of course, to help complete combustion...
To light up his charcoal fag...
To turn it into invigorating red...

Satisfied with his puffs
Turning the charcoal red...blazing...like a dot of glow...
Our motorist
Took up his pencil
And started to draw...
To explain things to people like me...

He put on paper his logic and motor sense
To make me convinced of his undaunted faith in the rotary design...

Me?
I just looked at both the engine types
Rotary and piston reciprocating one...
And wondered...
Does it really matter?
Does it matter really as long as we're driving and driving it fine and smooth...
Only the road matters...
The road...

Highway blues...

'Just another ride...
Though the evening is somewhat different this time!'
He thought...
As he rode through the Highway so straight...
The evening was filled with more mist...
Highway mist and highway illusions...
Headlights from incoming cars zipping past like screamers create the same maze...
'Only this time...'
He thought...
'I have no helmet glass to make things more illusory...'
He missed his bike but loved his drive still...
Driving down...
And the car seemed like an isolated room on the move...
So alienated...
Barring the windscreen showing him every moment
The passage of the evening...
The passage of the people, dhabas, deserted petrol pumps...
He kind of liked the passage...
Liked the passage of the car and his soul...
Down the highway...
So long and straight...
So long...

He kind of liked the localities whizzing past...
Buzzing as exceptions...amidst darkness and lack of human presence...
'Just like our existence...so peopled and so much lonely...sometimes...'
He thought...

Come'n! we are no bodybags!

Hey! why are we doing all these?
Ain't it too clumsy?
I mean the way we smash the window panes every moment if we find something going wrong around?
Why dear! why we go bonkers like that?
Can't we be a bit tolerant...
See...
Your blood carries the same what we call...O I forgot!

Yes! Something like haemoglobin!
Right?
So you carry haemoglobin in your blood...me too!
Now look at your heart...
It pumps the blood...
Your lungs?
They purify your blood...
Right?
Mine too!
We all are so same dear! we all are so same...
Then?
Why are we fighting?
Remember that young poet who died in the bunker?
Died...pitiless in a foreign soil...
With a blood sputtered note-book on his red bosom...
Come'n!
Let's be friends dear!
Let's stop pushing knives into each other's bodies...
Let's live...
Let's stop turning us into mere foolish, dumb, bodybags!

why you died? you ass?

Tell me...
Tell me dear...
Why the f...k you died silly?
Why?
Didn't you scream it hard saying ' It smells like teen spirit'?
And everytime I cried, you cried with me too..
From the jukebox old...from my dad's sunday lazy afternoon's radio shows...remember?

'Nevermind' you said...
'Nevermind bro!'
You jammed...all through...

Then?
Tell me dear...
Why? why you the greatest ass who actually went poppier and poppier...
Died that way?
You claimed you are getting happier and happier...
Getting removed from your angry days...
But still you died...took to death...
What a shit!
Come'n!
Take us to the Nirvana, now...
Take us!

Atonement...

He thought did it right finally...
Facing his destiny with no clenched fist and parched tongue...
Facing his roughened soul with a piece of cake, with red cherry toppings...
Facing her with all the smiles he had stowed away for a while...
After being sent for the gallows for no reason strong, but because of wishes and dreams never been deciphered by him...

He thought-
Sitting in front of the white marble tomb...as white as the wings of doves flying close stretched to the full...
He thought he had to sit there...in the tomb...becalmed by the serenity of divine blessings...
After making such a beautiful journey of lies and videotapes...doctored...

He thought...
Sitting in the blessed tranquility,
Is like getting closer to the Atonement...

moving away...

He took the loop and fixed it
On an open space,
Fixed...
One end, of the string that had no loop, of course...
And started moving the loop at an uniform speed...

He did simple tricks like that on open space...
Several times, in his life...
Moving away...
Moving away in the open space with an uniform angular speed
Itself has its own geometry!
Geometry on the open space!
Moving away at an angular speed, yet being fixed at one end tight!
'Wow!'
He thought...
'What a spiral motion I have become!
My God! I am an Archimedean pattern on the open space...A pattern moving away...
Yet being fixed at one end...'
He thought as he looked how the uniform angular motion creates a spiral...
On the open space-
 Multidimensional!

on a diwali night...

While she was busy lighting the diyas on the terrace...
So evenly panned out...like little stars dazzling yellow
And her face glowed by the light so soft...

He,
Just sat there at one corner...
Looking at the glow on her face
And the diyas...
So pure!
As if the whole terrace became an aisle of a church...so somberly eloquent...
Carrying all the talks of undisclosed hearts...
And the murmur of the last autumn leaves...yellowish orange...falling in ones and twos...
Left him amused...

He thought Peace was the only word he searched for,
Right from his cradle days...

Peace...
It was there when he was on the crib...
Peace...
It was there till he lost his innocence...
Peace...
He wanted to regain it...
On a diwali night...
Full of diyas...all around...
And incessant bursting of crackers as well, which created smog...

Peace...
He wished he could live by it...
Amidst the smog..
And the crackers...
He wished he could become a diya himself...
Facing forever her...
Lighting him up with matchsticks...
Peace...
He thought...
Was She...
And he a simple diya...on the terrace...being light up...
As autumn waned to usher in the winter...
And as the darkest night glowed with light...

She became Ether...

'Come on board the cloud...dear...'
He said oneday...arriving at her door...wearing a flannel white..
As if he had been a part of cloud for long...looking wondrously fluffy...just like a cloudlet himself...
'Where's the cloud?'
She asked...
'Why? can't you see? we're all in the cloud!'
He exclaimed;
'You got to be joking...'
She said, suppressing her smile, taking all these as part of his whims...
'Oh dear! just feel it...just use a bit of your senses...'
He pleaded, looking seriously overwhelmed by something...some kind of magic, perhaps...
But she just kept on looking at him...his clothes....flowing in the afternoon breeze...carrying scent of distant seas...

He...
The cloudlet smiled...
He...just smiled...benign...
He then mumbled, as if he is letting go of a secret...
'Dear...just close your eyes...and feel the breeze blowing...take in as much air as you can take at one go...
Then release it slowly...very slowly...and release it feeling every bit of its passage through your lungs...
Your airlobes deflating every second...
Just release it...as slowly as you can till you feel there's no air any more in your lungs...'
She looked at him, dismayed...

Then,
She did exactly what he proposed ...
She closed her eyes...
And a dark curtain set in...
A dark curtain...shuts her into a dungeon...

Then she felt the breeze blowing by her untied hair...
She felt it blowing by her ears...
She felt it blowing by her body...almost caressing every angles and rounded shapes of her physique...
She got a mild shiver...
As if she was being made a part of a foreplay...
She got goosebumps...
And she felt the air more...
She felt she was forgetting where she was...who she had been...
The Dark became a blue space everspread...
The Light blinded her...
She felt the light making her transparent...
She felt the Light passing through her unsexed presence...
She became a non-being...
She became ether...

waiting for your bus...

With the sky turning blue like the freshly painted canvas...
And the scent of shiuli reaching me every early morn...
I know, dear..
That you're on the way...
To meet me after so many months...
I can get the news of your arrival!

I know, dear, that you've already taken the bus from your place...
And probably the bus driver is amazed to see you walking into the bus so early
Wearing your favourite white knee length skirt with floral borders...
I know...
That the bus is virtually empty-
Carrying only you to me!

I can see you sitting by the window
And the mild morning breeze playing with your scented hair silky...
I see you looking out of the iron bars of the bus...
With your eyes being so eager to find me standing at every bus stop that lines your way...
I see you filled with so much of happiness
Are you not equally eager to relive the moments?

Well...dear...
I am eager too...
Waiting for your bus to arrive
Right at the stop with a corrugated tin shed rusty
Opposite my balcony...
I'm here standing right!

You might be confused, I know...
Seeing things changed so much here...
The big mahogany tree with its sprawling branches
Is no longer there by the bus stand...
So also the small park across the road...
They are all gone dear...
All gone...making way for the big apartments you see...

But still, as you're on your way to meet me...
I think...
The mahogany would return with its soothing shade...
And all the children with fill the space with their playful cries...
If you're on your way to meet me...
Dear...everything returns...
Me too!

at a village fair...

Riding his bike as usual...
Somehow he reached a village fair...one wintry evening...
Yellow lamps hanging from wooden poles gave the fair a distinct festive look...
And the village folk in humble dresses...oily heads...thronged every nook and corner of the field
In which several makeshift tents were set up...

He gazed at the wares being sold...earthen pots...simple wooden kitchen tools-wooden spatulas...
Wooden flat round shaped boards and barrel-like artifacts...used usually for kneading doughs and making chapatis...paper-thin...
Glass bangles in another stall...
Bangles as varied in shapes and designs as feminine faces, so varied and charming!
Bangles red, yellow, white, purple, green...
Bangles made of wood even!

He looked around with his eyes-
Not curious but full of curiosity...
How simple people of the village gather at a humble fair...with their children and wives and women...
Weren't they full of mirth and gaiety?
Weren't they pleased and wonder struck by simple things?

Then he looked at his expensive bike standing a few paces apart...
Two hundred cc engine...with all muscle power...
Switch-type ignition...
Oil filled suspension...
Digital tachometer...burning blue fluorescent!

Then he looked at his shoes
Branded, freshly bought from a mall selling brand equity...

Then he looked at his soul
Such a commodity, so cheap!

At the village fair...
He rediscovered his forgotten self...
He thought he got rid of hedonistic illusions
Which come wrapped in malls
In shapes of colored paperbags and designer elements...

Peace...

One hundred and forty thousand
For Hiroshima;
And seventy four another
For Nagasaki;
'Let's give Peace a chance, dear!'

'Let's give chance to Peace...'
Cried that bespectacled man with boyish charms
And a beard running astray-
With his wife by his side
And several hundred young Turks
Sitting on the pavement
So red ...so red!

One hundred and forty added
To seventy four more...
'Let's give Peace a chance, dear...'
And we shot that young bearded man dead
On the pavement so red...so red!

(This poem was listed up as an entry to UNO international social media page on World Peace,2011)