Conversation with a Stranger

One day he asked someone hiding inside

the bodily façade like a fugitive,

‘Who are thou?

And why despite all the architectural negativities

people define thou positively?’

From it unreachable deep cellar

that someone raised it germ-free, disinfected voice,

‘I am the exiled one without choice,

While the bones and the flesh around me

in worldly spotlight rejoice,

I just take the ordained backseat

and watch the game of

birth, survival, struggle and death

played inside the castle on the shaking stage.

‘Don’t you feel perplexed by the passing days?’

Again the query was voiced,

‘Don’t you feel bad or ever you rejoiced?’.

It answered in a heavy, impassive tone,

‘Thy gimmick cannot shake my throne,

In the timeless shades I spend my time here

and when the castle will be broken

the death squad will find the door open,

Away I’ll fly with the figures of

deeds and misdeeds to the final court,

and if it is found short,

again I’ll be exiled.

It has been like this for thousands of years,

but I never rejoice at new birth

nor weep at death and shed tears,

My book lies in mighty primordial hands

and the player to settle cores changes with worldly trends,

I am the same forlorn, exiled child

of the majestic, mighty father,

It’s a never-ending game perhaps,

A tiny cog on the chessboard of creation,

Let’s see how high and mighty you make the castle,

Void will then gobble the tone and stars!’

Sea’s Home-coming

Waves sway in the rocky bay,

Sea in this small playground plays,

Such vastness engulfed amidst rising rays!

Father comes to the daughter from far away,

While, scattered, toyed, rocks lay

Numb to 'father-child' who gyrates,

And daughter’s lullaby exhilarates,

Sky, meanwhile, claps its cloudy array.

O visitor waves,

Existence-lorn, thou come

Here for a homely swash,

Peep playfully inside coastal caves,

Bring aquatic gifts for some,

Along with gusts of air fresh.

***************

Lady on the Canvas

When a painter paints his lady,

Even the colours seem ready

To sacrifice theirs and turn hers,

Vow, colours ebriated form a painted verse!

The brush too gyrates,

Softly, softly it narrates

His love tale,

Blossomed how a flower in a dale.

He, the love’s portrayer,

His soul immersed in a deep prayer,

Her features emerging,

Aha, love through his hands oozing!

Those eyes now ogle at him,

Deep, deep to the soul’s dim,

And his eyes at hers,

Goes on painting the verse.

When the love is fully faced,

Brush suddenly stopped and fingers braced

The pretty face eager for a praise,

Fallen sage got the colour erase.

******************

The Nature in Love

The singing vales and flowery dales,

Away, somewhere in nature’s cradle,

Dreams open arms, with all charms,

Come here, come here! Worry not hurdle.

The place in isolation, with Godly intuition,

Too excited to meet someone!

Come dear! Come dear! Don’t thou hear

And remember that fun.

The musical rivulet, and thy hut,

By fullest heart they call,

And the air awaits with thy breath’s share,

While the clouds still remember that playing-pal.

Trees sway with breeze,

It whispers patience in their ears,

Come he will, on thy hill,

In dreams, thy call he hears.

Little pathway, companion on that day,

Embraces those footsteps still,

Hums that song, sung in shadows long,

Where is he? Asks the cloud passing hill.

Wild beauty of yore; opens heart’s door,

Remained I loveless for too long,

Then thou came, with thy love’s tame,

Resonates here now always the love-song.

Thus the lovely vale, falls in love’s dale,

The love-lorn lady; silent beauty moan,

Dreams moments those, blossomed when love’s rose,

                           Come, come! What serves the purpose beauty alone?

The funny lady on the canvas,

Stared at him with extreme alas,

And furiously said,

                           Dear, have you gone mad.

The Old Moon and Imperiled Panorama

The Old Moon and Imperiled Panorama

Pallid rays of this pale moon

had grown old so soon

during that half hour before the morning twilight,

It was a chilly, clear-skied, frosty, fogless January night,

The moon just a night away from fullness

had been exceptionally bright.

Nightlong, almost near the acme of its beauty

it had fulfilled its luminous duty,

Its milky beams had over-lighted

or overshadowed many a star,

It seemed eager to blot out

every stain and tainting tar,

Its beams falling like snows

upon sleeping horizon to the far,

The beautiful plains of this countryside

were lying in sleepy abundance

under the milky, chilly blanket with slumberous pride,

Everything was open to this celestial torch

with nothing to hide,

Cold-basking fields were huddled under their croppy sheets;

above was gloating the marvelous moon-shine,

Wheatlings stood bow-headed in reverence

with dewy crown fine,

Those marigold flowers were shining

unabashed under the milky showers,

The flowers happy about

losing their colors to the lover’s

mysterious smiles and its powers,

White pea flowers boasted their augmented whiteness,

Aha, such dolefully beneficent had been the brightness,

Even trees didn’t seem dark, indistinct specters

lurking shadowily over the horizon,

They appeared boats of foliage

floating in a misty sea,

In the background of such a brightly lit stage

even the sky seemed earth-lorn,

Through the milky transparency

its bluish-black veil lurked and through it

only the brightest stars smiled,

Scattered in the docile swathes of this

moon-baked countryside

villages seemed like mammoth ships silently

floating in the white wavy sea of light.

The moon was now well past its prime,

as if in shining too bright it had committed a crime,

Its setting quarter was in the north-west,

where the moony panorama had shone best,

And now it was moving towards rest,

Its strength and vigor had

dangerously plummeted down,

It now seemed ogling with a

meek, angry, anguished, helpless frown,

Its brightness was fastly fading out

And its yellowish pale rays

appeared eager for a wailing shout,

Glumly it was fading over those sandy undulation

carrying fields, furrows, crops on its gently unfolding dome,

Shiny fruits born of sweat-laden efforts in its sandy loam,

Accusingly the moon threw pale, protesting

shadows in south-east,

where urbanism, consumption and crass commercialist

blatantly had its seat commanding, metropolitan, capitalist feast,

The area had been earmarked

for some merciless development project,

It now being defined by a tiny space

bound in a map issued under

the state government’s gazetted notification,

What a mischief by the developmental hand!

Ever eager to bulldoze over nature

and turn it into uncomplaining, lifeless sand,

where lustrous stones will be built over nature’s burial,

 Oofs! How heartless, wanton and depraved!

This pale, mournful moon

which was to set soon

into the misty gloom of twilight,

when a bright sun of consumerism and commerce

was ascending to its dawning height,

Those stalks of reeds

which sway in the cold breeze without greeds

seemed gently bidding the moon a good-bye,

Plummeted which further down

with a swollen face and a sigh,

Its pallid face grimacing with a painful nostalgia,

Its fading, setting rays tainted with deadly paleness;

Its oblong, teary face

now looked at this landscape,

Sleepy fields, warmthful wastes and fellow lands,

What mighty lessons have been taught here!

Aha! The farmer going to the fields with his gear,

Those long, painful, sometimes fruitless days

subsided when the sun’s eager rays

 looking at the sweat’s trove

and the shirt’s hoe,

Where the long painful dark nights

arrived like the deeds accomplished,

Where the failures galore

but the hardwork never bored,

These failures defined success

as the losses stood just as a testimony to the profits,

Where hopes, aspirations and desires

varied with the changing hues of weather,

Farmer pawning everything

for the feathers in destiny’s crown,

Gold forms immaterially—

or minimally at the rate of a dust speck for a gram—

in the toiled soil brown,

All will be gone,

The moon was also dying with a moan,

This beautiful charming mystery of the landscape—

why hardest labor fetches minimal returns;

and why a bit less harder toil results in

a soul-satisfying speckful of return that seems wealthiest—

All this beautiful, aesthetic, curvy, circuiting strings;

Mysteries of landscape, of destiny,

of the see-saw battle between pleasure and pain,

between penury and sustainable as well as gluttonous gain,

between life and death:

All this will be lost for a direct, straight,

materially penetrating needle of surety,--

The commercial, unflinching and fixed

use of the landscape

in the form of concrete approach

where profits will boomerang

in proportion to the short-cuts;

Where compromised morality, ideology and conscience

will not face any ifs and buts;

Where there will not be any sweet scent

of labor that will be replaced by

the mechanical, greasy, muddy panting

of merciless competition and grab;

Where concrete blocks, flats will replace

these wonderous solitudes basking in and around;

Where sheaves, stalks, straw and reeds

will not sway to the breeze,

but blank, rigid, ironed tower

will stand mutely, inflexibly to the nature’s cooing calls.

Now the sorrowfully yellowing

death rattle of the setting time

was arriving with a chime.

There on the opposite horizon the day opened a window

to sneak a peek at the imperiled room of night,

Wispily, there was the twilight

with its mixed day-night delight,

In its mysterious lap,

the old moon met a slightly premature death,

Slumped as it feebly, freely

into the silvery sea of mist

standing still over the treeline.

Into this sea of death, the moon plunged,

And the twilight mischievously winked

with it unfaithful, teasing look asking favors

both from the night and the day,

The old moon was gone with its last ray,

And soon-to-be-doomed panorama,

unmindful of the fatality waiting,

came out of its dewy slumber,

A crane’s clarion call

cree….ked over its yawning breast,

The sun prepared to cast its first ray

and the fields got up for another hard farming day.

PS—Time of the poem: Half hour before the morning twilight of January 13, 2006 (Lohri); a day before the full moon day (Makar Sakranti, January 14).

The Parrot and the Old Sparrow

The Parrot and the Old Sparrow

After a long, hard, heavy, wearisome journey

at sun down,

its will a bit cast down

and temper with a little frown,

The parrot with wings tired,

its beautiful colours all mired

in hard journey’s perspiration

landed on a branch.

Winter was at its peak,

And anxious, drooping, panting was the beak,

With every minute saffron slanting rays

were melting into misty bays,

Cold was slowly creeping up

and its pinch was becoming bold

to take everything in its hold,

With sad eyes it ogled at the setting sun,

Too long and taxing had’n the run

and long forgotten was the flight’s fun,

(Where was that fleeting, winged pun?)

With each mile the journey had become a drag

and vigour and energy that uplifted him with a brag

were now dumped in some pit,

Last ounce of strength was then hit,

But still he had far to go,

while his height became continuously low,

Before the eventuality did he bow

and anchored his feathery weight

upon a branch’s restful bait,

‘Merciless, frost-fanged will be the night,’

he thought to his misery’s delight,

As the warmth vapoured off his body,

Shudder came over him with incremental ease,

Anxiously he ruffled his feathers

as if to loosen cold night’s siege,

Where to spend the night

he thought from depression’s highest heights,

Suddenness of sunset made him realize

the possible utility of the remaining time,

And he looked around like the

feeble truth emanating from a sad rhyme,

For miles long everything appeared

surrendered to the twilight’s imminent pal,

And all wood appeared solid and creviceless;

without that niche which is a bird’s hall,

Before his despair and agony touched another peak,

he heard a muffled, breaking-free, old, juvenile shriek,

An old sparrow,

its grayish patches long under time’s harrow,

was seen bathing in a puddle,

Seeing him his senses went into a chilly huddle,

‘Hey, such a cold night in waiting!

Take care it does not become death’s baiting!

Fellow, you must take care

and must not extend your dare

to the extent of your doom!’

The sparrow squeaked and shrieked with zoom,

‘My old coat has enough room

for the water to turn vapours

and shun and beat death’s creepers!’

With his saggy, drenched feathering

the sparrow flew to him for a hearing,

And the visitor’s problem was told,

Said the sparrow becoming gracious and bold,

‘Dear, I have no family

and live in a banyan crevice,

Come with me, I’m at your service!’

It was a horribly chilly night,

No light for miles to sight,

Chilly rainstorm beat against the tree

to uproot the shackles and set it free,

But the tree was strong,

It withstood the deathly throng.

‘I live here all alone,

Though reminiscences sometimes come to moan

over my beautiful, active past,

Darted when I fast

and voowed damsel sparrows with finesse,

 Raised families as the cost for my instinct’s ecstasies,

Then age caught with me,

Now eyes no longer see

the beauties of this world around,

but sense the death’s bloodthirsty hound.

Still I live happily as the tail-end

of that great life lived,

 Enjoyed I the choices that fate sieved,

Now, I have to pickup and play

among those things and chaff discarded

which remain unwanted above

as fine particles trickle below,

Steadily this discarded heap grew

While I enjoyed the sieve’s fine brew,

Now I roll like a kid in that rubble of past

which was once waylaid by youth’s blast,

 It now becomes the precious wealth

of my old age,

Shiny becomes the rage in this haze,

There are no takers for it now,

So I enjoy it all alone

without that competition’s drone,

Happily I’m all alone with my age old,

And try even to become bold

against this winter’s hold,

During youth I flew majestically high

To beat cold by my blood warmths,

But now wisdom swarmths,

And I still find ways

to brightly lit my days with these feeble rays,

In this cosy wood-hole of mine

Drunk I’m with my age’s vintage wine,

I know that I may not go out of this hole

to ride softly on time’s back at some dawn,

When mortality may pick up the pawn,

Leaving this old feathering engraved

in this very woody niche,

But that does not make me sick,

Because that sleep does not seem

different from the one that I now enjoy,

The pitcher of desire no longer exists,

Neither is it empty

so that I must have desires to have it full,

Nor it is full, so that I should browbeat

being afraid of losing it,

The sinews holding life to my body

have become impassive, senseless and bloodless,

They will not feel the pain of cleavage:

It will be just like an autumn leaf

being painlessly windblown into oblivion,

In this tepid existence of mine,

devoid of both heat and cold,

warmth and coolness prevail in some

pleasant, vague proportion,

Pleasure and pain seem to have lost their specificities:

Neither both exist, nor are they dead.

You are young and colourful!

How come you look so submissive and sad?

Have the conditions been so bad

to steal and rob all the real charm

and leave the colour on the feathers and soul

so dull and poor?’  

The parrot spoke:

‘Though I am young

but the spirit seems to have sung

the last song of life,

Too much has been the pain and strife,

My spirit seems to have run dry now,

Though the colour on my feathers holds somehow,

When just a hatching, father was gone,

Grew I hearing mother’s moan,

The paternal sun thus never shone,

 Still the biggest consolation was mother’s

caressing, preening, feeding beak,

Ate I fruits at love’s supreme-most peak,

As the sole nestling

I was fattened on her labours daylong,

And then went to sleep hearing her lullaby song,

 Aha! Sweetest dreams came with a throng!

My whole existence was tethered

to that maternal pole,

The brightest, attractive-most star sole!

Under her great grooming,

colours on my feathering came bright,

Lavishly they flashed as I fluttered

them for my first flights,

Unbelievable was the pride and compassion

as her soaring soul’s maternal shades touched brightest heights,

In her eyes I saw a new light,

How marvelous was that sight! 

Alas her incorruptible love of yore

was arrowed by fatality’s shot,

Again cupid’s love arrow came hot,

I became a past with negligence and rot,

She was now in another spring of love,--

Incipient love for the future in her womb,

I thus became an orphan

even though my parents lived,

After many cries and anguished aimless flights bereaved,

Life’s burden with my soft feathers I heaved,

Young and beautiful, flew I with

time’s oblivion and balm,

Intoxicating is such youth’s charm.

Inevitably I fell in love,

Heartfully I cooed my beautiful lady,

Those love-lorn days when heart

was ever ready to sing an ecstatic ditty,

Such a wealth was in my kitty,

So sweet, silent, mirthful, unencumbering

were those acceptances of nuptial responsibilities,

Those watchful, eager searches for niches

in trunks for our nest,

Tirelessly we wandered around for the best,

Guided by love’s brace

we found our place,

In this tiny hole

nothing else but we had all the role,

Our identities melted into each other,

How proud was I when I became father,

I’ll not become like my parents, I thought,

I will not be ensnared like they were caught,

So I clung to my possessions with pride,

But the inevitability came with a chide,

In full bloom of youth and colours

all of my brood flew away,

 My lady-bird came to be infatuated

under someone’s cooing sway,

It was another fine day

when she bade adieu and flew away,

I embodied all forlornness,

All my loss was glaring in my face

monstrously unremedied,

I decided to leave that place,

And my sulking wings did brace

to take up the longest possible flight

from the place where such unfaithfulness abound,

So flew I as if pursued by

fearsome-most flying hound,

For many days I have been flying

with my soul aching and wings crying,

Why should we enter into something

and love somebody so completely,

if it is bound to gutters,

Isn’t all such temporary dives

into life all banal,

Aren’t we cogs in the hands of those

inevitable, unstoppable processes?

The old sparrow, full of wisdom,

Undisputed king of his life’s kingdom,

Spoke with the solace and simplification of age,

 When youth’s dilemmas no longer

haunt with their pinch and rage,

The sparrow said:

‘Its just like a flower ruing

and weeping over other blooms,

because its beauty will not last forever

and will go to glooms,

Dear, it’s not we who are the ends,

Rather the beautiful phenomena like

love, marriage, procreation that decide the trends,

We are just means to these

beautiful ends and destinations,

So, become a tool uncomplaining

tilling earth without any expectations,

It is not that love exists

because we do love someone,

Love is the primordial sea without any

limits of space, time and individualities,

It is we who sweeten a few

moments of life with it,

till the chaotic, destructible existences get hit,

Do we procreate to cling to procreation life long?

No! We are made to procreate

to become unselfish means for the propagation,

for handing over the batons,

to perpetuate these beautiful phenomena of

love and relationships,

We do not leave behind an offspring,

but a possible instrument

which might come in handy for

the sustenance and survival of

those very precious moments

that got us the taste of love, happiness

and contentment at their best,

And if we recognize that

then our spirit gets a solacing rest,

If not,

then caught in the web of selfish net,

we acrimoniously bet

that I completely loved her

and became the cause of young lives,

It was I who caused that buzzing in those hives,

But such limitations would have been

meaningful had our survival unlimited,

or say our immortality was uninhibited,

But our journeys are to be ended,

So just cherish those moments which you tended,

If you cling to these phenomena

like they are your inheritance forever,

They become a drag around your neck,

making you a prisoner behind bars,

which you create around yourself,

Liberate fella! Liberate yourself!

Become a journeyman who understands that

young flowers on a plant,

young soots on a twig

do not lessen themselves or the spring,

in not ruing over their wispy autumnal dismantling,

for they inculcate phenomena,

They help perpetuate treeness

And they sustain the beautiful,

natural concepts of beauty and bloom,

They also served in a similar way,

made some new ray (though it is only light)

to decimate in some shadows, some gloom.’

The long fabric of the stormy night

was slowly lifted over their head,

Outside, stormy chilliness was fleeting

before a promising twilight,

Chances were there for a day bright,

Clouds parted from the face of sky,

The parrot’s spirits cut through the shadows

and soared high,

The old sparrow said:

‘The day today is warm and sunny,

The dawn promises sweet honey,

Youngman, I’m in hurry to come out of my hole

and play my chirpy role

in the beautiful stage set around,

My soft soufflés and feeble light in my eyes

are enough even for the down-hilly afternoon,

 You but go high,

because the forenoon is there for you,

with its multihue,

Go, so that you do not rue over

the day aimlessly lost,

Do justice to the old spirit of thy host,

Take some lesson from my soft feebleness

and the way I make a day out of my night.

Thanking him the visitor flew away

into those swathes of promise,

where new life, new love, new relationships

held sway!

The Princess

Many-many full moons ago,

There was a beautiful princess

in a tiny, paradisiacal hill state,

Surrounded by nature's blooms great

her beauty was ever-touching new scales,

Nature spread across far-flung wild trails

sang songs of her majestic beauty,

Slowly-slowly it did its duty

to spread around the tales of her charms,

For miles and miles

her fame could measure distance in arms,

Reached it the ears of a prince far,

whose kingdom had'n at war

with her father's,

And lo! Enough bravado this prince gathers

to set out to look at that famed face,

Seemed he then a futile chaser

running after destiny in a tragic race,

Lovely wild flowers kept on giving her trace,

Untamed breeze came to brace

his young heart and brave, soldierly chest,

Moved he ahead without rest,

After months-long sufferings in the ravines,

he found himself where her star shines,

Wandered he in her kingdom in impersonation,

for so antagonistic was the air in this nation.

Her fame spread more from the mouth's word,

Too precious was this bird

to be ogled by too many eyes,

So desperately he tries

to give solace to his aching eyes,

His pining heart gave suffering, cold sighs,

Then chance showered its bloom

and gone was his heart's gloom,

It was a full moon night

and moon was lit at its fairest bright,

The princess went for a boat ride

in the marvelously calm lake,

His heart shook with a thunderous heart-quake

as he stealthily waited in the shoreline foliage,

Every passing moment gave a new courage,

He was just above

the princess' safe, secret bathing ghat of marble sleek,

This white monument gleamed

exotically in the panorama bleak,

Arrived her boat then with her giggling maidens,

His heart was now achingly struggling

against his broad chest,

In filigreed finery she was dressed,

In silent majesty she put her adorable feet

on the gleaming, cool facade by the waterside,

Waves rippled through him with a coquettish chide,

Her hallowed figure glowed distinctly

among her helping ladies,

And before he could think anything,

stony become his whole being,

Her finery no longer covered

her exquisitively carved flesh curves,

That naked fairy jammed his nerves,

That statuesque glow of marble on her skin soft,--

Aha that real life sculpture of

utmost sensuality and symmetry aloft!

Moon-rays deflected off her curves

and panting, pining reached his eyes,

Every moment her moon-sculpted body

acquired new vistas and highs,

Her flowing tresses on her naked back

lustily shook to her head's gentle gyrations,

He couldn't see her face clearly,

but he heard word spoken with mythic softness,

He was, but, dying to see her face,

so closer and closer he came

to fulfill his young heart's only aim,

Alas! He was noticed by her female arm-guards,

Quickly their masculined arms hissed,

Surrounded by trained females

he'd decent chances of escape through a fight,

But how could he blot this night

by testing against females his skill,

Strong ladies advanced on him

with the chances to kill,

Caught he was in this way,

When the next sun came with its curious ray,

his misadventure's word got around,

Shook then her father's throne's ground.

It was the enemy's unforgivable crime,

So sentenced he was to death at his youth's prime,

But kingdoms have inviolable laws,

so his royal blood deserved

the fulfillment of a last wish,

Then how could he miss

the last chance to see her face,

So request he an eye-full brace

of her magical features,

God! Why thou create such bewitching creatures?

He was thus led to the courtyard

below her balcony ornate,

Her sad eyes looked at him without any hate,

The prince too was no less on handsome scale,

On his perfect features a smile loomed pale,

The princess knew that her face had'n the bait,

which could soon seal this life's fate,

Thus fell she at her father's feet

with an utmost, painful entreat,

'Father it was no fault of his,

but is all due to my well-thought kiss,

Stranger this prince is not,

for your daughter secretively tied the knot,

And if you kill him

sorrows and sins would cross ocean's brim,

A father would widow his daughter,

For ages known will be this slaughter,

And if thou still send him to gallows,

certaily another death bellows'.

How could the King let this

darling flower wither away!

So smiled on many fates a new ray,

They were ceremoniously married,

Decades-old animosity was buried,

What beautiful outcome of her wise, petalous step,--

For herself marital bliss

and for two states a friendly kiss!