morning yoga

april 8 | day 8 free-write

 

morning yoga

three lines of gold

tangent to mountainside—

hands fold in salutation.

evening walk in rakkar

april  8 | day 7 free-write

 

evening walk in rakkar

weathered brown hands pick weeds

from the not-yet-ripe wheat fields,

green chunni tied around the head

matching the green salvar-kameez

camouflaged in the kanak.

a few steps away, another green

chunni matches the baanjh tree

just-so, with the red kurta waiting

for the goats as they eat their fill.

 

a lone monk sits reading on

a rock, iPad in hand, while an

old lady adorned in turquoise-

and-coral counting her evening-

prayer mala calls out, “kahaan

jaa rahe ho?”

 

a boy lies flat on the rock while his

friend goes up & down, up &

down on his mountain bike. past

the new house being built, black

 

kites and indian grey hornbills

are having a party in the sky,

swooping like acrobats to catch

dragonfly-like insects I cannot

name. i say namaste to the

newspaper-vala, the tent-vala,

the village children who gobble

shahtoot straight from the tree

and offer us the same: the ripest,

purplest, juiciest of berries; i’m eight

again, and i tell them about how i

used to climb the tree having stationed

my brother right below with a steel

katora, throwing down shahtoot for us

to gorge on exactly like how these girls

are eating them today.

 

continuing on home during golden

hour, the sun a bright ball of orange,

all else seems to fade. these are the

moments i long for, that make

each day worthwhile.

shiny

 April 6 | Poem 6 

shiny

blackout—under half-

moon light, even stale dahi shines

in the compost pit.