Prose in praise of poetry.

Without the seed of poetry there won't be any prose. Just like without the tiny seed there won’t be a tree. The canopy, the full foliage of the tree is just an extension of the dream lying with its realistic potential inside the small seed. The elaborate network of trunks, branches, twigs, flowers, fruits and leaves is nothing but a commentary on the small poetic seed. So all ye wannabe writers, nurture the poet in you, who understands the value of pause in life, who moves slowly to watch everything, sight and smell everything. Whose senses are open to the inclusive interplay of wonderful harmonies of the supreme song, the universe, the one song. Brushstrokes of poetry softly touch the soul without disrupting its restful muse and bring out the nuggets of love, compassion, harmony and peace. If you are a poet by nature then you have the potential to be anything because all these elaborate extensions of your life, your dreams, your professional and personal goals, your milestones, the world around you, all these and more are nothing but a reflection of that poetic pure seed. Love yourself as a poet.

Autumnal Awakening

Oh God, that Hollowness!

Oof! That soul entombed in misery,

The ragamuffin, the beggar,

Great potter’s potsherd he was,

Those decaying, yellow teeth

splashed and sprayed this world

with misery and incurable jaundice.

His trifle weight could outweigh

the fat chickens over the globe,

And eyes ever so colourless

could gobble down springs all.

The ears like the deepest gorges,

could accommodate a billion sympathies

and countless words soft,

The tongue would talk to millions,

if the opportunity arose,

Alas, the milling humanity around

pretended not to be visible at all,

People scampered past with the

careful eyes of a cautious thief;--

saving both their conscience and money.

His emotions lay buried deep

in his famished breast,

This was his treasure trove,

He kept it safe,

Afraid to take them out,

lest they slay these as well,

His bleeding heart would have

painted this planet in gloomy red.

A dog, cat poop, wrappers, dust, snoot, phlegm,

And he just another addition to these,

Almost indiscernible among his insect kingdom,--

Dusting, rottening  petty cast-out.

The accusing emptiness,

And the hallowed universe around,

Holding his mocking lighthouse,

Throwing feeble, exposing light over the

fallacies lolloping under the abounding waves

of the booming sea of hilarity and well-being.

The Feminizing Man

Fragrance scented and colours prismy,

Flowers seduce with surrendering softness

and intoxicating aesthetics,

This alluring, sweet poison slays many,

Parasitically it creeps into

the hibernating, sleepy male vitality,

And the red, gushing blood of sense and sanity

turns into silly swirls of bluish oblivion and foolish torrents,--

A marvelous decolourisation of

flesh, vision and potency!

The woman does the same with the man,--

Her moves lie under the surface,

letting loose tremors and shakes of

tamed beast clinging to feeble, unmanly chains:

the emotions, cooings and the mellowed stone,

Then she slaughters the prey most manly,

Bravo! Salutes to the femininity:

hardest heart under the shield softest.

Weakness has its strength in vulnerability,

Don’t mistake power by the steel in muscles,

Soft flowers and seductive women

thrive on the dew shower of temptations,

Eyes thirsty, pining senses;--

The altars of the insected, infatuated masculinity,

More the offerings on the altar,

more the Goddess thrives,

So many wither to bloom a smile

in her sly eyes.

But her demands from the worshipper

are never satiated,--

Greedy Goddess!

She thus hunts around,

But greed can never make one complete,

So she just remains a fraction,

Men cut themselves to the same

to complete her missing portion,

Happy Goddess then

laughs at the follies of the maimed.

Black bee, man sacrifice to

prove the worth of an ounce of femininity,

Rivers eat mountains, while the stone

cherish the fluidity of the majestic masseur,

The woman meanders to fragment the man,

Making round, harmless, coddle-able pebbles.

As the feminine apostles web around,

The caught caterpillar hums the songs of love,

The spider salivates and chuckles,

The trap of seduction,

The cobwebs of death,

The river thus triumphantly

rolls on with mighty boulders,

The song of macabre swirling

among the torrential giggle and macabrous moan.

Femininity wins through its weakness,

The flowers smile and bloom on showers of tears,

The woman makes the man a means to her end,

Travels on his strong back

to reach her destination

and find the purpose of her life.

A little bouquet of emotions

The Winter Dawn of My Village

My village under cold, foggy clouds,

Lives, dallies in the wintery days,

Aha, agrestic, agar and still closed to the world,

It dangles with dew, mist, frost and all:

Birds, animals, villagers all respond to the chill,

Matches which attitude theirs:

Uninterested and not much conscious of the ‘hotty modernity’.

The dawn taking a yawn after a night frosty,

Like a curvaceous damsel,

after a dreamful, sweet night,

arms raised to the vigorous pull of youth,

reddish lips in a tantalizing twisted pout,

and breasts firm against any overture uncouth:

Glimpsing the maternity universal,

Ready to save this world from the doomed hate,

Her eyes full of love, smiles and dreams.

The westerlies breeze over the budding wheat

like a dusky, nimble-footed beauty,

The soft touch of her heels on the earth—

soothing, assuaging, healing and comforting,

And the wheat spikes open their eyes

to the maternal touch,

Like an infant moves its small, sparse eyelashes.

Arrogant crows fly out of the village,

To those dense plantations afar,

With wings cutting the saffron rays,

labour they will the whole day

and return with the brumal signs in tired rays,

Choosy parrots fly to tastier trees,

Mother nature has extra-pampered them:

The vagrant beauty of colours red and green,

Even nature seems favouring them

more than the blacks,

So they fly in the opposite direction from the crows,

And why not?

Closer they are to nature

than the rookies showing many characters human

in being retentive, querulous and cunning,

So the greens fly higher than the blacks.

Wool-laden toddlers waddle along the streets,

Like little Eskimos,

Their mothers put extra woolen layers on them:

Maternal care swaddled around them,

While they sneak away like tiny explorers

to see a bit more of this world,

Their aged peers, their exact analogues

on the other side of the slope,

warm their fragile, old bones around hookas in chaupals,

Hollow cheeks buzz with chuckle and logic simple,

Far from the warmth of gushing youthful blood,

They are mere fractions of life,

trying to integrate the group

and form a still-meaningful complete integer,

to live with at least that much of life

that at least would comprise a single, bubbly youth.

The village beauty smiles behind her thin veil:

The moon behind a fluffy curtain of soft clouds,

The sun peering over a cloud’s edge,

The star smiling from the farthest distance,

The lotus in hazy waters.

The hurried gait to finish her morning household chores

looking awkward on her fine, work-honed curves,

Tipsy, honeyed ogles,

potent to infatuate the hardest heart,

just fall on crude work,

Locks of hair with style simplest,

The envy of metropolitan beauties of great care,

Worry not! The virgin soil of the village

dances around thy work-beaten heels;

a chilly breeze kisses thy rosy cheeks;

The tiniest particles of the mist cling

at the single lock out of the veil.

And the sun struggles to rise in the east,

Only to ogle at thy shadow moving graciously.

Yes, such is the winter dawn!

Reddish-brown rays cut across the fog,

Gobble up the last traces of the night;

It comes to my village

like a daughter practicing ‘nature’s care’,

right from her birth in every relation.

The rising sun will dry away the dew, mist and frost,

Seedlings straighten up; the burden is off!

Bravo! Every seed off the peasant’s hand

fights nature to feed the nation,

Salutes! The farmer’s green paint splashed around.

Icy vapours off the village pond

shelter migrants; many from the Himalayas,

Exiled by the snows,

they live happily, warmly here,

This dawn is proud to host the familiar

crane couple, ducks, pelicans, herons and many more.

Such is my village at dawn,

Ready to go and almost self-sustain,

So few are such places, elsewhere!

The Light Beyond

There is light beyond the deepest dark depth,

There is a bright day after the ghostly haunts of nightmarish night,

After a barren famished fight there is a blossomed springed 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 deafeat, 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!!!!

Love Fangs

I feel the shapeless mass of your love,
It creeps like a venomous reptile
through the garden of my heart,
It furiously hisses,
returning my softest kisses,
I bear the toxic marks
left on my skin by your fangs.
Still I carry your poisonous bulk
in the soft cradle of my heart.
Why?
Because I have no choice to hate you,
I can just love you!

The Immortal

I know life has rejected me,
And death when will accept me
that time is yet to be!
Till then, O Sufi, is there any light to see?
Yes fella!
It's in being with those who have been discarded by fate,
Who have laboriously scrawled and scribbled lifelong
but still have a clean slate;
It's in smiling with innocent dawns;
It's in basking in the sunny charms of forlorn lawns;
It's in the faded twinkle of distant stars;
It's in saying goodbye to the intrigues of my own internal wars;
It's in being with me,
And the way it is, let it be!

A Note from Spring’s Deathbed

The spring's traces last,

Hot summers approaching fast,

Languid notes in the air,

A solitary bird's forlorn chirping for musical share,

Drowned in stillness

this late morning bright and fair, 

Sky's dull blue,

Overhanging the earth in paling hue,

But a smaller world is there,

The overall lethargy cannot reach where,--

In its self-defined world

in a corner tiny,

The luscious wild flower 

still stands brave and shiny!

 The Smile, the Godliness

O thou wind-lashed flower!

Sadistic nature took rapist bites

at your soft petals,

At each bite and cut it laughed

and licked its blood-smeared lips,

You but stood unfazed for

beauty and fragrance.

The storm but

kept on increasing its fury,

But for how long?

It ran out of its fuel!

And stood panting and drained out!

When the night and the storm died

and a beautiful, warm, sunny day was born,

the profound flower stood majestically resplendent!

Its storm-lashed petals

more beautiful than ever!

Why?

Because never did it let

the smile go off its face!

The Flower’s Tears

Flowers aren’t supposed to weep,

Even if their petals are vandalized

and raping storms

spit all their fury

on their fragrant face.

It’s just for beauty’s sake, they say,

And tears on its petals are no tears,

These are unholy signs of its revolt.

So they just expect it to smile

while their poisonous fingers

greedily tear away petal after petal.

Listen you merciless fools!

A flower bears the pain most!

Even though its unfading smile

never allows it to surface on

its smiling face.

But a flower weeps unseen in the

dark hours of the night,

Humans, the dew-laden petals that you

gratify your senses with

are in fact the tears of that

soft petalous self.

The Mother

I’m the fire,

Who can fathom my

burning core’s plight!

They dance in my warmth

and see only the light!

The Bleeding Flower

Flower you were always beautiful!

Those balmy days blossomed your wonderful petals.

Then the weather changed,

Stormy winds, furious storms

took sadistic bites at your soft petals.

Bleeding flower,

You but kept your smile,

Nature’s fury caressed and lashed you,

Biting winds lynched you,

Like a sinful rapist they groped you,

You but smiled forgivingly.

Now the sinner stands

robbed of its fury,

And you smile more

beautiful than ever.

Lover, beauty and harmony prevail,

Hate, anger and lust fail!

The moment which fell out of my pocket on the way

Staring at the misty past

and forcing myself not to see the future eager to unfold itself too fast,

I wave at the nostalgic strains still beckoning and alive,

How I wish I could dive

back into the pools of the past,

To have my moments last

at a place that held me in its cradle soft,

That pious embrace which still holds me aloft!

The Last Prayer

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 Coin

My story is strange,
To understand it, you need brains
I was a coin with lot of shine
Then I went into the hands of

one after the other,--

The darkness gave me the creeps,
And I was lying on top of the heap,
Somehow I was given to a young guy,
Who tossed me in air and made me fly,
Then I was given to an old lady,
She kept in a place that was very shady,
I noticed I had lost my shine,
And I didn't look young and fine.
That is because I had grown old,
Now ,I know my life's story is told,
There are endless scars

and imprints on my soul.

I have lost my value in my own esteem,

But they still haggle sometime.

A Rainy Moment

Village...
musty...
like a mossy mushroom under a banyan...
rain-lashed...
semi-shaded days...
washed greenery greedily sprouting forth...
a love-lorn peacock dancing...
a bee-eater diving for its success and the insect's failure...
swallows riding the airy horses...
a tailor bird throwing loud vocal force for its 7 gram weight...
squirrel and crow fighting for a nut...
a mud-smeared dog losing the force of its barking against a braying donkey...
paddy standing lugubriously...
and the water hanging above,
ready to melt and shower its love again, 
any moment...

Lost in Red Mist

Lost in Red Mist

She is a courtesan fighting for a respectable identity in the quagmire of degenerated nobility, wars, intrigues, debauchery, lust and, last but not the least, love.

She is a foreign tourist in India, raped, picking up the fragments of her violated self, walking with bruised honour, her innate goodness intact, to reach the house of justice to salvage her identity, to redeem her pride.

A circumstantial pawn in the checker-work of sex trade, she passes much of her youth in the muck of lust only to regain herself back, to free herself in her forties, to begin a new life.

Kashmir is burning and in the bigger fire are smouldering little worlds of common hopes, mundane dreams, routine aspirations and regular cravings.

He is huge and lifts unthinkable weights for a living, goes on living and lifting weights only to be crushed by circumstances.

On a badly stomped platform he gathers the nameless pieces of his dusted identity to have a name, a face, an identity of a common person from the normal world.

In the Tsunami ravaged Andaman, she, an Australian anthropologist, survives and looks with hope at the remnants including the sole surviving Shompen tribal.

On the devastated eastern coast of India, he, a mere kid, takes the onerous task of caring for his still smaller sister, while the world around seethes in chaos.

He dreams big from his small village, only realizing later that the dreams that grow in disproportion to one’s circumstances are as good as nightmares.

He, an old man staying alone with a cat, patches up the holes in his present through tales of the past, to survive, expecting a painless end in the future.

She, a Western tourist at Rishikesh, opens her spirits while a whole world drags around her feet.     

Indian novelist speaking from buffalo barn

https://youtu.be/wYjWF8NoEiU

Lost in Red Mist

She is a courtesan fighting for a respectable identity in the quagmire of degenerated nobility, wars, intrigues, debauchery, lust and, last but not the least, love.

She is a foreign tourist in India, raped, picking up the fragments of her violated self, walking with bruised honour, her innate goodness intact, to reach the house of justice to salvage her identity, to redeem her pride.

A circumstantial pawn in the checker-work of sex trade, she passes much of her youth in the muck of lust only to regain herself back, to free herself in her forties, to begin a new life.

Kashmir is burning and in the bigger fire are smouldering little worlds of common hopes, mundane dreams, routine aspirations and regular cravings.

He is huge and lifts unthinkable weights for a living, goes on living and lifting weights only to be crushed by circumstances.

On a badly stomped platform he gathers the nameless pieces of his dusted identity to have a name, a face, an identity of a common person from the normal world.

In the Tsunami ravaged Andaman, she, an Australian anthropologist, survives and looks with hope at the remnants including the sole surviving Shompen tribal.

On the devastated eastern coast of India, he, a mere kid, takes the onerous task of caring for his still smaller sister, while the world around seethes in chaos.

He dreams big from his small village, only realizing later that the dreams that grow in disproportion to one’s circumstances are as good as nightmares.

He, an old man staying alone with a cat, patches up the holes in his present through tales of the past, to survive, expecting a painless end in the future.

She, a Western tourist at Rishikesh, opens her spirits while a whole world drags around her feet.