The sound of shoes

An evening walk.

My shoes make two sounds.

1.

Shoe on the road.

Friction dissipates energy as sound and heat. 

The road responds 

By scraping the shoe.

Another lap begins;

A tiny stone chips.

— This is how we make our own roads,

Chipping away the ones that have been walked too often.

2.

Sweaty feet on shoe.

Labour — a squeak.

Not a roar, however,

Loud enough to be heard.

Questions

Must I write today for the sun, what about the blinding moon? 
Must the day end the night, and the sky a leaf cross, the hiding moon?

Must we excavate ruins of the earth for a shelter to rise,
Must my verandah be blocked for iron bars to confide in the confining moon?

Must out of the spell be conjured its wishes
Only for them to bathe in the desiring moon?

Must we who desire be expelled
To remain trapped in the circumscribing moon?

Must who we desire be expelled
And remain trapped in the croning moon?

Leaps the rabbit outside, a shooting star
How must it find a way back to the shifting moon?

For those of us who have sung tonight, asks Prabhas,
Must our voice reach the deafening moon?

My mother's age

"How old are you,"

An elderly woman once asked my mother.

"I have been married for 25 years,"

My mother said without hesitation --

Neither an additional blink,

Nor a truant sigh.

In another instance of the same question, 

Mother would say,

"My son is 25 now".

Her age was always contingent

On the age of others --

Sometimes a relationship, sometimes a child

And at other times, the death of my two grandparents,

A year apart from each other.

My mother could seamlessly sacrifice

Fifty years of her life

To shadows of people men.

24 years of her life

Cornered in the hippocampus

Fading slowly for lack of recall,

Stifled, for they are not anchored into

Marriage, childbirth or caretaking.

I wonder if those 24 years

Will one day erupt

As stories

Gleefully declaring themselves known.

Will my mother sing a poem

In honour of her memories resisting our forgetfulness?

Will she say,

"I am fifty"

Audaciously, as I have known her to be?

That day on,

Will she carry the weight of her years

And not of my father, myself or my grandparents?

बंबई की एक तस्वीर –

बंबई की एक तस्वीर –

हाथ में नक्शा लिए घूमना

चबूतरे के नीचे चूमना

कबूतरों पे हंसकर

दुनिया से मुंह मोड़ना ।

Last night

I forgot to close the door to my balcony.
You came in,
A gust of wind.

Slowly,

Knocked off the Buddha statue.
Ashes from last night's unfinished incense flew
And settled on the floor.

Cold and polluted --
You hit my lungs.

Odour of a dream

Caustic.

I breathed you in 
And heaved you out,
I shut the door 
And prayed devout.

A colour

Interrupted --
By a branch
Cutting across its belly
Like lightning.

A colour
Holding --

The weight 

Of the sun
As it sinks into the other side of the world.

A colour
Reflecting -- 

Into black 
Waters, yet Shining.

A colour
Smudged --
Carefully 

By an artist.
It's weight 

The canvas can only dream.

A colour

Created --

Drop of yellow,
Some red, blue
And green.
The world in front
Changed.
Time -- Moved.
City -- Asleep.

A colour
Shaped --

Like desire

Like me.

हाथ आपका जैसे मेरे कंधों पर

हाथ
आपका जैसे 
मेरे कंधों पर –

रात
हमारे नाम
नज़्म लिख गई ।

सुबह
गाने लगी दर-ब-दर 
कि आज बात हो गई ।

दोपहर
में तपते हुए पेड़ 
झूम उठे जैसे
शाम हो गई ।

शाम
की तनहाई को
रात में पनाह मिल गई ।

रात
जैसे आज
ख़ुद ही सो गई ।

हाथ
आपका जैसे
मेरे कंधों पर ।

B&W

Black --
The colour of the coffee I drink,
Of the night that refuses to sleep,
Of a t-shirt that I wear in a dream.

White --
The colour of the cup,
Of the moon that rises up,
Only to set in the creases of my t-shirt.

Black --
The colour of a failed chiaroscuro.
The tip of a pencil pressed 

Hard against paper.
An impression that swallows all light.

White --
The colour of an eraser.
A blank canvas.

Friction.
Impressions of the pencil remain.

An outline.

The dream -- fades
The t-shirt -- remains. 

"Rahiman dhaaga prem ka na todo chatkaaye,

 Tode se firi na judey, judey gaanth par jaye."

Violet

Violet
The colour of the sky
On days when light suspends itself,
Disperses
Across the horizon
Like the changing colours of my cat's scratch
From sharp and red
To purple and diffused.

Violet
The colour of button flowers
That wait to dry and fall
On to the earth
From the garlands of yesterday. 

Violet
The colour of the vein
That sticks out beneath my skin
Near my ankle
Where you have
--- Many a times ---
Coloured me red.

Violet
The colour of temptation.

Violet
The colour of my hair.