Break

 

After relentless

frontline service,

sometimes 

a mother may decide

to put her aching feet

up and enjoy 

the hammock—

the one that always

lay nearby.

But of course,

there was no time.

Sea or Sky?

 Isn't the colour 

of the sea 

just a matter 

of the sky

in that moment?

Blue on the days

when the skies 

are clear;

meanacingly dark

when clouds 

hang low;

and sometimes 

a playful palette

of a whimsical artist

mirroring the drama 

of colours above.

Stubborn

 

Don't distract me with the moon.

What business do I have

with the unknown silvery suspension?

Glorious, perhaps, but I'm not sure

it knows me as well as you do.

And why should it bother?

with a far loftier task

to shine over the world?

Let the moon be.

I'll look at you and you at me.

Your gentle gaze is all I need.

You are that moon, my moon,

and every other light

there might ever be.

Caught

I am caught in myself:

In the tantrums of toddlerhood,

the sarcasm of adolescence,

the self-doubt of youth

and the parched wisdom of old age

Every day cycles through 

a full turn of seasons—

The mind's vast skies overcast at dawn.

Clear and azure in the evening.

Where do the clouds go?

Am I the movie

Life's showing me?

Hope

When my heart is soft and malleable,

When tears arise just as easily as a smile,

When this world's nothing but a sweet

reminder of your presence.

When I give with ease 

and listen with an open heart.

In that moment I know—

What if only as a speck?

In an unknown corner of my being

I carry you.

Your fragrance

helps me go on.

Elusive Rainbows

Rainbows are strange things!

Ever beginning far away—

on that distant gray

building closer to the blue.

How I wish they rose on

my house! And, so wishes the 

one in the distant building, too.

How silly, I can never spy 

the rainbow on my roof.

It is always a coveted

curve over that house

closer to the sky.

Tinnitus

Silence is just silence.

It cannot be:

Tinkling and ringing, however faint;

Singing of crickets, however pleasant;

Hissing of an empty tap; 

Muffled whoosh in a vacuum.

Silence is a sound in itself.

Even a smidgen of noise

Spoils it.

Parting words

Go gently into that night, Ma.

Rest your tired eyes.

Cast off your tattered clothes.

Follow the soft fragrance

Into the garden beyond

The pitch-dark tunnel.

Go peacefully into that night, Ma.

Be a child again

With soft-pinky hands

And a shrilly voice.

Find a new mother

And I shall behold you

In every infant.

Walk happily into that night, Ma

Dark as the Krishna on your altar.

Let go of my hand.

Snap the thread that binds us.

Crash the pitcher of pain

Burdening your head.

Trust the dark, Ma.

Run along to meet Him.

By a limpid pool across the night

Bathed in light

He waits for you.

Waking up

 

They waited

Lay low

Drowsy in the 

Soil's warm hollow.

People forgot

Did they ever exist

In the pot?

The magical caress of monsoon rain

Spurred life, soothed pain.

Up are they now.

Fresh and dew-swept.

Soaking in daylight

Like they never ever slept.

Surrender

 

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By the waters of the gurgling Giri lie stones of many shapes, colours, and textures. All seemingly the same, each dissimilar from the other. Some smooth, some jagged, telling layered tales of lives they've lived; some submerged, allowing the current to break them, shape them at will.  The ones in water have forgotten they were stones once. It may take years of weathering to do its work. But, the water will claim them one day. Unbeknownst, they will become Giri and reach the eternal ocean. The ones on shore will become Giri too, or be picked up as a relic for an altar. Every stone by the river has a chance for it is the nursing of the water.

Writing History

 

History is blind. It will not remember soulful food, folded laundry, and ship-shape wardrobes. It does not idolize effective housekeeping, caregiving, loving, or nurturing. Heroes do not condescend to do domestic chores. They are silently executed by the faceless, voiceless, unseen threads of a genealogy. History enshrines achievements; the task of nourishing bodies and souls does not quite cut it.

History will sing glories only if you charge into a battlefield with a child braced behind you. 

History is happy to be silent if you don't jostle for a space. Pick up your pens to tell your tales. Make subjects of breaking backaches and bleeding breasts. Make anthems of your humdrum lives. Decisions about breakfasts, lunches, and dinners may not change the world. Yet, no wars were ever fought on empty stomachs.

So, write your history. Shape it. Let your pen give voice to the house that became a home under your care.

The Dawning

 The bird in me is learning to sing

Its own song.

Sweet and discordant notes.

True or not, they are mine.

 ......

The bird in me has begun to dream

To fly and claim its share of the sky.

It pecks at the prison of self-doubt

Day in and day out.

Chipping off the iron bars

Bit by bit.

 ......

The bird in me is learning not to fear

The fall as it learns to fly.

Each fall fills the wings with courage.

Each fall normalizes falling.

 ......

The bird in me is learning to be a bird again.

Birds sing — for the wind, rains and themselves.

Yes, they may sing for the crowds sometimes.

Birds fly — to assert the speck of their existence

On the wide expanse of the sky.

Yes, sometimes they may swoop and flit

To show off their wings.

 ......

The bird in me is waking up to find

The bars were the shackles of the mind.

It is ever free to twitter, chirp, or cackle.

It is ever free to glide, flutter or flump down.

Every false note, every wrong move

Takes it closer to eternal flight and music.

Real birds fall many times

Before they trust their wings.

Before they take the first flight.

Truth or Lie

 

The vast expanse of buttery clouds sets wondering into motion. Do the deep white gorges hide milky waterfalls? Walking across the white field, would I stumble upon a fairyland? 

Monkey mind kicks in; perhaps, it's an illusion. A mere song and dance of the mist. It all amounts to nothing. My heart flutes another song. "The clouds may not be how they appear, but does it matter to you?"  "Isn't the seed of all science in wondering too?" 

I loosen the reins of reason. Let the spectacle trickle from the heart to the mind.

The slow dance of light at the center stage. Hues of reds, blues, and oranges bleed on the rim of the sky.

Silvery swords pierce the pillowy tapestry, revealing shimmery bronze ribbons of rivers. When are the rivers ever golden, bronze, or silver? Lego blocks of concrete, intricate circuitry of human dwellings, and broccoli vegetation. The eyes lap up tokens of truth from the sky. How charmed I am with the Lie!

All in a day's work

 Did you laugh today

At the silliness of the day?

Did you smile

At all things

Worthless and worthwhile?

Did you spare a wink

For the trouble 

Bubbling at the brink?

Did you huff and puff

At the messiness of the stuff?

Did you bend down

To talk to a child?

Did you admire the treasure

Of nuts, bolts, leaves, and stones

—all things deemed wild?

Did you eat the food with your eyes?

Smelled it with your heart?

Did you put away your phone

To enjoy life's full-bodied song?

Did you spend a moment with 'you'?

Did you smile and greet

The beautiful person you rarely ever meet?

Witness

A lone cloud

Descended in the valley 

At the crack of dawn.

A bank of dense white

Against the pitch-dark sky.

Precariously, it hung

On the grassy slopes.

       .......

I woke up to the spectacle

Seeped in disbelief.

If only others could see

What was so real to me.

A bale of white brooding

Over the bubbling brook.

 .......

I could tell the tale

But will it be the same?

The truth I felt in my veins.

How would I lend

My sight and insight

To transmit the excitement I felt?

I — a sudden witness to nature’s

Fiercely guarded secret.

.......

I could lose the moment

In the whys and the wherefores.

Or be silent and still

At mind’s choppy shores.

A sudden shower of blessing

At my door

To none of my credit.

I closed my eyes and opened

My heart to receive it.

.......

There it stood in its pristine glory.

Truth — beyond the stretches of reason.

Beyond the constraints of affirmation.

One could behold it or walk by

All clouds belong in the sky.

And after some cogitation, some may

Call it a chimera of the mind.

Yet who can ignore the moment of truth?

When it comes dropping slow

Like dew drops riding on the air.

Unseen, unheard, but your entire being

Responding to the wetness there.

.......

Once in a while, a lone cloud

May descend from the cosmic sphere.

And you may witness it stark and clear.

In no time, it will scatter and dissolve

All of the real cloud turned into mist

For you to wonder, “Did it ever exist?”

.......