Lost

 

It has been months since

I last lit my faith's lamp,

So many days have passed since

prayers chimed in my dark den's air damp,

My meditating self,

Now gives atheistic yelp.

Lost my faith!

Lost my prayer!

Lost my rituals!

Lost my meditative trance!

The Light

 

The light does hark,

beyond the deepest dark,

There is a day bright,

after the ghostly haunts of a nightmarish night,

After a barren famished fight,

there blossoms the spring’s delight,

After pining pangs of separation,

there is a worthy end to the desperation,

After crashing in the gutters,

there is a surge and rise to bathe in holy waters,

After crying convulsions on the lips,

a smile takes honeyed sips,

After the last defeat,

still there is an undying urge to accomplish the feat,

Even when blind with despair,

there is hope hiding and cajoling somewhere,

Even in hate, love still lurks somewhere.

The Story of a Frost-beaten Tree

 

The winter has been brutal and harsh,

And my struggle turned almost a farce,

Lost all my leaves,

With loss my soul grieves,

Still not all is lost,

For greenish life finds a host

in the wheat at my feet,

They pay a respectable greet,

My loss and my pain

don’t go in vain,

Tumbled down as my leaf

with pain and grief,

Blossom thousands around,

Wheatlings like daughters doth surround,

Fell where my tear,

Many a smile this earth doth bear,

Doesn't go waste my pain,

Sows it the prospects of gain,

If not for me,

Definitely for thee.

Little Master Corona

 

O thou little master,

The world was a bit faster,

You now force brakes,

Lions turn into drakes,

Even newspaper is scary,

No longer a news-carrying fairy,

It comes from Delhi,

Fear pinches my guts and belly,

With inhibitions I touch,

A fearful world is such.

Indefatigable Beauty

The storm screeched through the night,

Poured its fury through sadistic love-bite,

Undefeated but smiles the beauty,

Still doing its fragrant duty,

Her holy petals bear

the storm's violating drops without fear,

Holy beads now they are,

Smiles, smiles and no war!

A Cosily Safe Smile Somewhere

 

The spring’s traces last,

Hot summers approaching fast,

Languid notes in the air,

A solitary bird’s forlorn chirping

for its musical share,

Drowned in stillness

this late morning bright and fair,

The sky’s dull blue,

Spread with some mystical clue,

But a smaller world is there,

The overall unease cannot reach where,--

In its self-defined world

in a corner tiny,

The luscious wild flower

still stands brave and shiny.

The Midnight’s Throaty Call

 

The great call at midnight:

‘Will the throaty pitch and guffaw

be the same for the thousand years coming?’

If it’s to be such,

Please, then let us all

turn to nothingness at this moment.

 

Nothing new does it seem:

The chorus behind the throaty

noise seems to be the same foolish dream.

 

Such a huge and godly definition

given to the change,

Most forgettable is which,

but parroted now with childish rage.

 

Godliness has been contrived out of it,

I’m afraid it will bear the end same;

Revered now most formally,

Misunderstood and negated afterwards,

In all practices which

the sun will uncover at the dawn.

New Dawn—Warm Rays for Frigid Fate

 

The days are in fact trotting,

A new dawn, new year, of course

new century and millennium,

The snaily destiny but pulls back.

 

Time may fly past,

Making us grow manifold,

We but remain stony,

rigid and preyed upon by chance.

 

Moves it too slowly,

Whom spirit never catches,

Its rock-like firmness,

makes us stick mossily around.

 

I do not know

what the new rays have in store?

Better or worse?

Rays to see or to blind?

 

Today I start my new day;

A new start and initiative,

Let me see if the occasion special

lends its hues to me also.

 

My palette has just two colours,

Just black and white,

Let me see if it gets multi-coloured,

Giving me a new rainbow.

 

I do not know whether the new dawn

is a different one, after the night long,

When darkness grappled with me and I failed,

Or is it the same as the old?

 

Let me see the occasion

too special and celebrity,

Prismatic and multicoloured,

Too long was the one-coloured night.

 

O new rays,

Please turn the occasion special,

God please, leave I myself

at thy complete mercy.

Of New Glimpses, New Rays

 

The new sun, millennium new,

Rays new at Dong, Katchel,

Pray I, crown my India anew!

New with a newly hewed crown

with hopes of more survival,

Not so with basics, rather

new roles, responsibilities new.

 

That India which saw

so much of flux and turbulence

over thy last empire—

History of religions,

Of races, ideas and many more,

Pray I, the newly diademed

remain such in the millennium next.

 

O new sun, shine too bright,

To light the patches dark,

Haunt which the geography ours,

And shadows whose reach hearts,

Sun, please warm up our hearts

with new warm ideas,

Glow with such spiritual aura

that the highest peaks in the Himalayas

shine like a jewel on the head,

O light, traverse through body

‘Hindustan’ to most distant parts;

Each hut, each palace, each home,

Light them, do away with the dark.

 

God, we committed wrongs,

Blood spilled over,

Minds became rigid; misunderstood,

Pray I, o new rays,

Warm up them again,

Blanket up the wrong,

O new sun,

Shine with vibrancy such.

Three Big Zeroes for All

 

At this zero hour I stand in the dark,

trying to see the newcomer,

Nobody is there, alas!

Not even the refracted skylight.

 

Bundled out round in a circle,

I thus fumble around words,

Meaning whose has fatality—

Of circling around; ending nowhere.

 

Three big zeroes of the new,

which hover over, gobble up

the sleepy environment  around me,

Wonder while I about the ‘zeroness’.

 

Three zeroes take me round—

The zero for myself,

A bigger one for the country,

Still larger one for the world whole.

 

Will I break this vicious circle

of rounding on the path same;

Burning out too much energy,

Arriving then at nothing?

 

Will this country having

so many self-centred circles,

Arrive at something new,

rather than the same big zero?

 

And what about this world?

Will it unmatch its physical shape?

The great big circle,

Binds which our orbiting passions.