Heaven under the Hot Sun

 

The sun marches north; sultry evenings,

Bulging wheat pods await rituals last,

The wizened golden stalks ready

to surrender the fecundity crowning them;

Farmers cut, gather, reap and mow

with bull’s eye and parental care,

Birds filch every lost grain in the soil,

Crops smile daughterly in the days bright,

Hats off! Accept they the rites last with smiles.

 

A dog, dry-mouthed, awaits master’s lunch,

Birds, their beaks full, ferry the cargo to the nests,

A bunny runs in the fields bare,

looks for some hideout any;

Above, a gibberish crow caws a laugh,

A sparrow looks into a waterhole,

Few drops there and a hornet gnarls over,

A child plays under a tree’s hot shadow,

The air dances around the working mother;

Plays with pollen in hair long,

And she doing filigree with grains,

The locks of her hair try to protect

the ‘moon’ shining in the glaring day,

She jerks them away and smiles.

When I was Small

 

Bird was I, flew tirelessly

in what was to become golden past,

And the innocent, humane most,

Matured are the wings now,

But lost is ‘big’ in its bigness.

 

World was then,

as small as me, and beautiful;

Distorted are both today,

As I trample the ‘soft me’,

And the world grows up harsh.

 

Things only trivial now,

Hugely inspired that delicate heart,

The urge today being fat;

Lost is imagination and heart shrunk,

Mind has become iron clod almost.

 

Weak was then I,

for flying too high and far,

I flap wings too much today,

But tired I am,

as wings fall short of the desires.

 

Then I had only heart,

Too big and I lived,

I only survive today

with a tiny heart;

Vast is my mind today.

 

Frightened was I then of

most common, simple things,

But now, bold I am,

not to fear any inhumanity,

Present of that past, I am.

Sympathy Game

 

Disability, permanent or short-lived,

Is a cause of distress extreme,

For, sulks one in the ripped self,

A mere breaking star among shiny thousands.

 

Satisfaction of the competition

being the fuel of life,

As nothing else is society

but relentless rivalry among the capable.

 

Abhorred is robust and fit here,

Know they, fitness is nothing

but a hindrance in their path,

And cursing goes everyone.

 

No time for the interests common,

As heart has shrunk much,

Bellicose is man, bellows only;

Bereaved human is rival such.

 

Ah! The redeeming glimmer exists,

Thank God! Thrown is someone

out of the race mad; abed is faculty,

Sprouts then the sympathy fountain.

 

Emotions, adages pour out

for the poor player out of the race,

Admire they the infirmity in him,

Already dead he is without playmanship.

 

It’s the disease and disability,

Making you suffer lot,

Yet smile at it,

For it has aroused an emotion precious.

The Old Man and the Hut

 

The old man and the hut,

Reed and grass sheltered

like the old bones in his body frail,

And both of them hold

on the brink of life and death,

being and non-being,

Wispy fleecy in a hush,

Penned down by the destiny when

she was on flying clouds

and wanderlust.

 

The old man, nobody knows

from where he came,

Stranger even than a foreigner;

Wind-fallen in his own land,

A pedigree, on the verge of

ending on his side;

Nobody to inherit the wishy-washy shelter.

 

Nature habituated to them,

The old man and the hut,

A small brook, a forest averagely thick,

And a loneliness persisting,

Save a sortie or two

by an occasional adventurer,

Who may come to spread the self.

 

Nothing changes here,

Except time through his wrinkles

and some sinew blown from the hut,

A marvellous, fluid constancy of nature:

Same chirps of the birds,

Same bubbling in the brook;

Also the same generality,

Except one particularity,

The old man and the hut.

 

Wintery shivers in his humble bed,

With eyes staring at the roof,

Giving strength to it

against the raindrops naughty,

Longing to play with him.

 

In summers, he sleeps outside,

In the open, under the starlight,

Too much light above!

But alas, too far!

Spread out thus in the open,

A look into the stars above

with the eager eyes of a child,

Then close with a peep

into the depths of age,

Thus sleep layers over him,

He knows not when,

And where, nobody cares.

Our Existence Torched: The Life

 

Life is like a shooting meteor;

Just a whizzing-past star,

Whose starting point nobody sees,

But of course, visibility of the end,

Wow! Abruptness with a vengeance,

And wormy annihilation in

capacious, unbound space.

 

We are the shots from the unknown;

Intentional or accidental?

Predetermined or chancy?

Willy-nilly, we just roll over

the calamitous mud of the slippery path.

 

Life sparkling with a fizz,

Pain, joy, smiles, weepings and ecstasies

swoop like a meteoric trail in the sky;

Born to soil the earth,

Like the broken star’s residue,

We add to the primal matter.

 

From unknown to the unknown,

We are known as a ‘life’,

Just as the luminosity of

a shooting, breaking star.

Reaching Heavens with Wings

 

There I zoom like a bird,

Imagination matching its flight,

Aerial view of the panorama below,

With earth laughing, cajoling,

But, I sense the futility of its smile,

Which myriads personify by

living, sweating in the furrows.

 

Bird’s eye! Yes, I just see

the scenery general most,

Without ‘particularity’ any,

Strikes which at the chance first,

No, I don’t create particularity,

Not of woman and things tempting,

My ‘bird’s eye’ slipping over the edges,

Making curves of generality,

So universal is my love,

Not to be caught by a single heart.

 

O man, fly like a bird,

With wings carrying across

the infinity of the universe;

Never become stones of personality,

Bound by specialities many,

Whom many things strike

like bugs eating the dead;

When every incident and trend

lynch the prisoner chained.

 

So fluff away like a bird,

At the trivial most instance to save life;

I do the same like a bird,

Shy away from everything,

And fly away, tail twitching,

To the horizons where nothing pinches;

No love, hate or nymph-like thing

cling to the mind to create trauma,

Yes, I wish to be only such!

Believer, Atheist or Agnostic! Which Path?

 

Religion is made a spade

in the hands which hypnotize

the masses blindfolded, hoping for cures;

Remedies for why, what, when…

The religionist!

The crowd before the sermonizing hands,

The lucky ones looking for

good fate’s another instalment,

And the majority begging their first,

Denied to them till now.

 

Awe-struck!

Stupefied thus, they squat,

The mighty grip around the tool’s handle

meanwhile rakes up further ritualistic earth,--

The great spadework!

By the hands preaching, hypnotizing the audience,

who cannot see beyond the fence,

Get up when they after the show,

See apostles build up,

answering meaninglessly

the great queries of what, when, why, how…

And more lines get written to theology,

The magic book of all panaceas.

 

The Pandora box!

Opens with uncountable spectacles,

And the tears of agony, joy, everything,

The chorus now grows further,

Politicians, bureaucrats, corporate…

The expertise! The hypnotizers join

with their ever-elusive tete-a-tete;

Spreads His gospel theatrically,

And the mass stupefaction multiplies.

 

The great religious band!

A pair of hands symbolizing God’s,

Music in the background by the experts,

And the hypnotized cloud enlarges

from the religious opera house,

Reaches the lone hut, villages,

states, countries and continents,

And finally the farthest universe,

Enlarges it too much,

To infinity!

The hypnotized universe!

Ever multiplying talks about why, what, when…

 

Stamps from the Pandora box:

Devotional, devout, pious, religious,

After the show, they all come out,

Stamped foreheads, the believers!

Beguiled by the tricks of the gloved hands,

If hypnotized not still,

They bark at him ‘Atheist’,

The one who questions what, when, why…

 

This unstamped, unorthodox outcaste,

Counters the divine oratory

with sizzling counter-points,

Questions upon answers to what, when, why…

And they neigh in desperation.

 

Opens the atheist now

the Pandora box of his own,

The box with tricks to

to undo all the great work done,

Another magic book!

But for the negative infinity

by a ‘single god’ over all the godheads,

To dehypnotize the public,

Too great an effort!

But still a small whiff,

Unable to create a storm

of negative winds,

and negative why, what, when…

Devotional winds blow around, meanwhile,

 

So what do we have now?

The majority hypnotized, blindfolded,

And someone in tantrums,

Arguing testily and

striking as many heads as possible,

To awaken them from the slumber,

Alas! He but is negative more, restless more.

 

What do we have now?

A dish with spice:

Orthodoxy spiced with unorthodoxy,

Hence tasty, juicy more.

 

Someone is also sitting somewhere,

His existence too earthly,

The real dweller of the earth!

The agnostic!

Questions or their counters

don’t reach this self-religioner,

So, worry not about what, when, why…

Beyond the confines of luck and destiny,

This conscious, relinquishing soul

has outflown too much from inside,

Vacuum thus created, where

cravings die and magic tricks fail.