Lowercase

 

Sometimes I want to write my name in lowercase

so that it fades behind others when misfortune

is prowling the city streets, reading the nameplates,

pondering which door to open, which house to choose,

and at others I want to write it small because

it feels more appropriate for a small person

who mostly does the smallest things. Little drops

of poems. Laundry.  Who’s stressed about the carbon

footprint, the gender gap, potholes, light pollution.

Pianissimo fits better, what’s been written? -

to merit announcing the first sound louder

than the ones that follow? Only those proper nouns

should be allowed higher volume, rising resonance

where the owners made some tangible difference.

Today is Independence Day, the 75th one. A major milestone. I'm celebrating. But that is also pianissimo. Too many issues back home. 

Happy Independence Day to all desvasis. 

May we be free of prejudice, inequality, poverty, ignorance, arrogance and violence soonest. Jai Hind!

The friendship of memory

 

A tricolour flag flutters over the fort.

Half the heart’s shattered, the other’s stoic stone -

it’s done this half-n-half many times before

so it knows it won’t mend, but can still go on.

 

The strangest moments populate memory

and the strangest, most insignificant stuff -

feather on peacock feather the noon’s layered,

softly storied and blended sandpaper rough.

 

There are kites and river banks where it’s standing

and long beaches where the casuarinas end

and whole childhoods laid out like a silken fringe;

but it knows memory isn’t always a friend

 

and it knows all footprints wash out with the tide

this side of the Arabian and that side.

Happy Independence Day to all those who're Indian by birth or at heart. Wishing all of us freedom from fear, repression and poverty. Of spirit and simple comforts.

Breathless

Credit

I’ve read somewhere – a prophet spent

forty days in the wilderness.

A pair of brothers were absent

for fourteen years more or less.

In strange, nested mythologies,

passages marked in sands and wars.

And in here-n-now territories

time buckles under tormentors.

I heard the empty vessels wreck

my world, too close their keels and teeth.

Saw too, a knee pressed on a neck

and shut my eyes, forgot to breathe.

The mills, I’ve heard, grind small but slow –

how many more aeons to go?

Clampdown!

A short story I wrote last month for the MOOC I just completed. Not so much a story as an extrapolation of reality...based on one of the conversations I had about the current situation in North India. The setting and characters are fictional, the clampdown is not! Longer than my usual post at 1300+ words (5 mins).  

Please read and share if you agree that citizenship should not be based on religion and India should remain open to refugees, regardless of their faith. 

~~~~

Clampdown!

Deepak slams the curved receiver down on its cradle. He does not aim quite right, it sits at an awkward angle, his annoyance goes up a notch at having to correct it. This froglike thing is no longer familiar, nearly all calls come in on his cell now. When did he lose the ability to function without a mobile phone? He tries to cast his mind back but he is too frazzled to think too long on it, his mind jumps from one jumble of thoughts to another. The internet has been cut off for ten days. The mayhem this is causing is in itself quite enough, without the smart-Alecky HR guys at the HQ breathing down his neck about the deadlines. Don’t they get the newspapers? Deepak had asked Anish sarcastically, but the latter said nonchalantly there was no news of the shutdown in the ones over there.

Don't quite recognise this street

II.

The map says the coordinates are the same, but 
something's moved, irrevocable, intractable
there seems to be less space around the round table
and if I try to speak, some young voice pipes up, cuts

me off mid sentence. The cushions have hardened
what was lived-in is now lumpy, there's vermilion 
on the wall, dried leaves, extra sprees of religion,
too much incense, and some freedom's drawn to an end.

I can't recognise this street address, I can't breathe 
for the smoke from ghee burning lamps, and the shadows
under them are the deepest, a golden flame glows
beside the threshold but the plinth erodes underneath.

The rug's frayed, the floor's crumbly - friable concrete.
It wasn't this way, don't quite recognise this street.

Okay, so I hope the political storms in the teacups of my brain are over. Of course everyone should take a stand to defend whatever opinion they hold, but I am glad it's out of my system. Don't get me wrong, I'm not for one moment saying that it's okay to be intolerant and obnoxious, just that I'm going to resist that tendency in our politics elsewhere. Here I'm happiest being bindaas and will be reverting back to that state forthwith.

All of next month I'm travelling - in USA for the first time, and meeting people I haven't seen in several decades, so excited! My post for the WEP is scheduled and I promise it's nothing political :) I will be catching up on the blog as and when I can. Meanwhile, have the most wonderful month.

What Absence Shapes

Rickshaw van in Taki

We are on a three wheeler, my cousin and I - three bicycle wheels with a flat wooden platform for seating, the front wheel connected to a saddle for the ‘rickshaw-van’ puller.  A common mode of transport in most of rural West Bengal, in India. The road, after a feeble attempt at being macadamised, peters out to a rich brown, wet mud track. It is mid-monsoons, the season of rains. The growth all around is so lush that the diffuse light of a cloudy day is filtered green through it. The road runs parallel to the river, the glimmer of water breaks through the dense foliage from time to time, sometimes the branches clear up to reveal the waterscape. There are small, pointy boats out, each one with the Indian tricolour flying. We are at Taki at the border - the far bank of the river is Bangladesh. Debhata, Satkhira, Khulna. The names are just as familiar as the Bengali ones this side of the river – Bashirhat, Taki, 24 Pargana.

Fitting it in is a breeze!

Freedom is a short word, shapeless like water;

I can pour it into my throat in a draught

and it quenches one thirst, but leaves the other -

tackling that requires more than just wordcraft.

Freedom – it washes into my body

like an ocean tide, and leaves too, just as

the ocean does. The sands littered with rocky

debris, bottlecaps and butts, seaweedfuzz

beached and helplessly immobile till a wave

is moontugged back again. Freedom is a short

word – it fits into my knuckles, the shape

of my lips, the chipped tooth of truth, a sport

of time. Freedom is just a two-syllable

word, it can fit in anywhere, no trouble.

Happy Independence Day to you if you are celebrating 70 years of self-rule! Jai Hind!

Ashoka, after Kalinga

The few who return home from here

will never again be quite whole.
Combat zones. Courage and fear.
So many ways to shrink the soul.

 

Not just flesh that is sliced open,

it’s not just bodies that blades maim;
violence plants its secret weapon
and those that return won’t be the same.

 

The tips of arrows, heads of spears

end of day are plucked from skin;
but war is too hard to pluck clear
from the heart once the blade goes in.

 

There could be other paths, directions,

fields, where it’s not this one battle
and maybe they too change a person
they’re not the same once they travel;

 

I’ll take that road and see for myself

if peace can be found a different route,
if a change in travel plans will help
and a war-free way to be will suit.