The Stone and Dead Wood

The Stone and Dead Wood

Only a flower that has been allowed to blossom

knows the pleasures of caresses and kisses,

A stone but misses the breeze’s deft touches,

Into its hardened pores no raylet reaches,

Only a beautifully blossomed bough

adorned with new soots, saplings, leaves and flowers

dances to the air’s singing tune,

A dry twig is all but immune to the storm’s fury

and soft breeze’s flirtatious games.

I too now become a stone,

Put me in desert’s parched sand

and you will listen no moan,

Put me in the cosy confines of a luxurious room,

And you will hear no heart’s boom,

Because all the juices vanished

during those nights of gloom.

A stone is a stone, is a stone, is a stone,

It has got its solid, concrete, lifeless status alone,

Inside it the light never shone

and its ironed particles clumped inseparably and forlorn.

Now, I too become a stone,

So let the storm blow,

It but cannot beat me further low,

Or let there be spring around,

Let the blossoms all panorama surround,

It but cannot change my face,

On my stony, statued lips no smile’s trace,

A stone statue now I become,

Expressionless and eternally mum,

But the stone statue is not dead,

Even though no calamity’s fear

roaming inside its ahead ,

and no pleasant expectation imprinted

anywhere in those cold stormy eyes,

But life somewhere deep down in its

solid chambers impassively sighs!

Freedom Versus Responsibility

For the lovers of freedom, responsibilities sound as prison chains. Responsible people on the other hand find themselves squeezed in a tight corner by responsibilities which do not allow them to enjoy freedom. The question is: Are freedom and responsibility inherently contradictory in nature? Is it really possible to make them complementary to each other by melting the contradictory edges? 

HOLLLAAAAA!!!!!!

For good people its very difficult to enter a relationship and still more difficult to come out of it! For bad people its very easy to get into a relationship and still easier to come out of it!  

Snake

I came across a brown-eyed human snake. A kashmiri pandit. More venomous than any kobra in the world! He just knowns how to bite...instinctively like all the slithery reptiles of his species. Its just impossible to come across a more spiteful person. It is simply your folly to expect a friendly kiss from a snake...the helpless creature is bound to bite only. Well, if a community can give birth to evn a single such human snake than its better that Kashmiri pandits left Kashmir valley because it is too heavenly for such human reptiles. Kashmir valley is better without pandits!

Encroachers

This thunderous beat of waves on the beach

tries to reach

the hardest core of rocks standing

mute and sullen on the coast.

The sea and its maddening waves;

uproarious, stormy, and boastful most.

For years, its stormy passion kissed the rocky face,

The fury of its infatuation caught the unsoliciting

lover in a grasping embrace,

The rocks mellowed and crumbled as beach sand,

Once where there was land

now becomes the soft love bed

for the waves to shed

their gnashing fury on its soft grains,

where love sighs in gay abandon

and soft showers turn into torrential drains.

In this land—sea love pit

a new passion gets lit,

Surrendered to excited storms

we forget all norms

and let loose waves

that break false rigidities and forced facades

build inside us for decades.

Waves to waves!

Rocks to rocks!

The sea just watches meekly

this sensuous storm on its bed:

The encroachers with all shame shed,

Its warning shouts ebbing away in distance,

as if afraid of this rival stormy surge

on the beach,

It recedes to save itself from this

huffing, puffing , grunting, tempestuous game. 

The prisoner

I’m ragged old,

I was once the youth icon

of the fauna around me,

Delhi was far and nonthreatening then,

We just enjoyed its lights from a safe distance,

The city didn’t seem at war with us,

But then it just spilled over,

Its bridges, roads, cemented pavements

ate into our innards,

I witnessed massacre of my near and dear ones,

I’m now caged in a high rise residential complex,

I’m just a poor, tiny banyan tree now,

Standing as an archaic symbol

in my cramped corner of this little park.

I go out of my way to give shade and cool air,

But I’m horrified and scared.

Even a kid picking a tiny pebble

to playfully hit my canopy

sounds like a terrorist hurling a deadly grenade.

So, against my nature

I’m always on guard,

crying for peace and mercy,

But it is too noisy around,

My mercy petitions fall on the deaf ears

of the stony facades standing haughty and proud,

I’m afraid any day the judgment

will arrive against me! 

Holy Harlots

Yamuna!

A black, toxic, putrefied nullah.

Cow!

A sewage-eating big pig

surviving on garbage dumps.

Two holy mothers turned harlots

in this age of Kaliyuga!

Delhi, meanwhile, pumps

more pride in its polluted lungs.

On stinking sewage-layered banks,

The skinny cow grazes on

noxious weeds and poisoned shrubbery,

Its beneficent, teary eyes

ogle at the human-industrial waste

mocking and mirthing over Yamuna’s sighs.

Who needs a holy bath now and cow’s blessings?

Two pillars of faith

now crumble down to pieces, 

Any listeners to their dismantling shrieks?