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.
