The Lost Light

 

Stumbled I across

the rugged mountain track,

Tall pines lingered above,

The gigantic peaks snubbed,

I felt the smallest there.

 

Cold air touched peaks,

Higher they appeared still,

Shrivelled I and crinkled,

Passed clouds above swiftly,

Confirmed piteous lowness mine.

 

Trifling I felt,

Took them as ghosts around,

Subdued I was,

Less by the body weak,

But more in the mind.

 

My eyes saw piteously,

Sick was my soul

in getting fooled by the pessimistic eyes,

Aching were my legs,

More by the weakness imagined.

 

Earlier, the sun illuminated

the whole valley alongside,

Living were all except me,

Now, setting it was,

And imminent was gloom.

 

Knew I, the lost opportunity,

Wasted I the entire day

in seeing desperate dark,

Now, manifold it was,

Realized I, the lost light.

The Orthodox Proverb

 

Work hard, you will get a reward—

It’s drilled deep in childhood soft,

A saying it’s only then,

Simple minds find it the elders’ trick,

Who any way must find fault

and ordain so many things unplayful.

 

The same proverb spreads its tentacles,

Grows it with the body,

Burden it is not now,

But a necessity to survive,

And they obey its command,

What a devil! Free by now.

 

The adults are serious enough

about name, fame and glory,

Dedicate they themselves to a cause,

Create a glass palace so huge,

Crumbles which one day,

Splintered pieces cut through the flesh.

 

The evil survives still,

Now through the sympathetic pout,

Except the sulking self, the universe parrots it,

What can the poor soul do?

If not aspire for the palace again,

Alas, the fate repeats itself most often!

 

Success is rarely the outcome,

If it comes, greater is the endeavour,

somehow doomed to fail another time,

And if not, failure is loosened

from the garb it had taken,

Both lead to the same age-old futility.

 

Battered is failure through pompous words,

To get ready the wounded,

And obey the immortal proverb’s command,

Dies it never, only we perish,

Even the dying is wished to

succeed in the life next!

 

There is no other way,

But to fall in its trap,

It’s supposed to last

even after the death,

If the saying has an exception,

Then please, tell me one!

Mother

 

So many things exist, to whom

one must shed the pungent sense of self,

But the murky self always neighs,

Making a nimble, smart, selfish, social dummy.

 

Stretch such things till the stars,

Whom our desires turn to dust around our feet,

Although measurable not,

Mother is but the loser most.

 

Machine is this society,

Operates on input-output principle,

Vary the losses among different relations,

Ever-giving mother is but the giver biggest.

 

All her relations take it through:

Parents as the ‘other’s property’,

Outshines husband as the hope last,

And children fatten on her maternity.

 

Mother of pearl she is,

Harder the shell, the better it is,

One day, sulks which empty, the pearl gone,

Suffers she with the hollow title of an ideal mother.

 

Most imbalanced is her equation,

Fattest is the oaf on the opposite;

Melts her in childhood,

And befools in his youth.

 

Mowed down in the old age,

Obsolete and ignored manifold,

Dies she before herself,

Without any solace even from the past.

Betrayed Self of the Indian Soul

 

Runs today this country, but how?

Gazing up to its stars, who

sowed the potential seeds of mass destiny,

Oof, defeated now by its masses own!

 

Their self vouched for a nation great,

But now self-betrayed most,

Self-defeating today’s youth

listen not the soulful cries of those martyred.

 

Ripe fruits they were,

Thrust themselves in freedom’s crusher,

Blood came pure, while the fleshy mass

and powdered bones smiled in the dust.

 

Those dying heaps of flesh dreamt

a rainbow-hued nation,

Alas, we stomped over their blood’s carpet,

With monstrous hoofs of every sort.

 

Torn out dream it’s now, smiling in some old eye,

While we run hoarsely, sometimes just to

pick up certain dusted piece

on some anniversary or the other.

 

Nehru’s ‘productive hands’ throttle others;

Non-violence simply an impractical antonym,

This nation will wither; its rulers show

moral corruptibility extreme; subjects do the same.

 

Gasps this nation for life, its body

sixty years old, clad in wornouts,

Holding its staggering and crawling billion souls,

But for how long, I am afraid to guess!

The Wind from Dreamland

 

O wind, come you from far,

From that land beyond dreams,

which the eyes never saw, nor ears heard,

and the sleep missed even in dreams;

Bless thou! You enable my senses

to feel, hear, see and dream.

 

I dream with eyes open,

Of the land distant,

Thy touch makes me

imagine all that must be

now happening there,

Circle as you around me.

 

Those small hills rounded,

With pastures, scattered trees,

Clouds playing with the sun,

And the laughing blue also,

The distant howl of a wolf,

and the bleating lambs straighten their ears.

 

I accompany that tiller

walking barefoot, on the way

to his small farm and

touch the tools he shoulders,

And wish him the best of potatoes,

O air, I can feel his worries also.

 

I look at that house far away,

On that flat ledge by the hillside,

Chimney smokes, doors closed,

Family gathered around a table,

And listen to their chit-chat,

O wind, I can see their balmy routine.

 

My heart feels their feelings,

They worry about the father

gone to the nearest town;

One of them going to the window

and stare into the misty distances

of the winding, hilly path.

 

I walk on the grass unbeaten,

which softly pricks with virginal blades,

Nobody must have walked here

except some lone animal,

Or, some forlorn love-drenched soul,

I rest on the green carpet now and close my eyes.

 

Sit now under a luxuriant tree’s canopy,

Few must have rested here,

A bird chirps above in the green,

Heart beats with its melody,

And the notes go spreading

and surrendering to the majestic solitude.

 

There flows a brook,

Its gentle murmur on the pebbled bed,

The eyes see a fluid canvas:

Sand, pebbles and fishes,

I now dip my legs in the water,

I feel rain somewhere up.

 

O wind, I can live all that scene,

Distances have melted,

You mixed that hilly essence

as you swept over the charming panorama,

That is the world only for me,

As nobody else hears, sees or dreams it.

God! Who or What are You?

 

God, reside thou where?

In a simpleton’s easy, empty mind,

or an intellectual’s heavy, shiny brain?

Fill you an innocent, almost empty child,

or burst from the laden, wise old?

 

Sun’s warm rays are you

that bathes us with life?

Or the dark, blind night,

imitate when we death and forgetfulness?

God, which facet of appearance you are?

 

The winner’s pride are thou?

Or sulk through the defeated?

The water around a lotus

or the parched land below thorns?

God, which extreme you are?

 

Ever blooming, fade not,

or rejuvenate now and then?

Punishment to the guilty

or mother’s soft hand to the wronged,

God, what art thou?

 

Strong’s heavy impact are you,

or the weak’s escape?

Whether the animals in the jungle,

or most social are you?

God, which thing art you?

 

Humane more than humanity,

or a taboo you are to avoid?

Whose master are you?

Of those devouts in temples and shrines,

or just a common good being?

Mossy Fluidity

 

In the mossy fluidity of a solitary pool
in a lonely vale,

An open, welcoming canvas,--

Mossy green, pale yellow, rusted brown and mottled gray,

As a tired traveller I stand and
see my shadows while the mountain breeze hail,
My spread self mixed with the mossy waters,
And I marvel at the small canvas holding the image,
While the brook tries to rewrite the colours.