Unpacking

When you get to unpack the case, you’ll find

the folded river like a paper crane;

the courtyard, the terrace and the blind lane

have travelled with you, nothing’s left behind.

In some garment, in the collar or cuff -

the smell of rain. The lamppost under which

the poor sold bargains pressed hard by the rich

has come with you and can’t be shaken off.

Each time you inhaled, breathed in the air

and your lungs bloomed like trees of night jasmine,

the shapes of old yarns, skeins of old chagrin

are coded in your baggage tags somewhere.

The bends of roads, the blends of diesel smoke,

a certain blur of traffic and townsfolk.

 

Because a graffiti artist drew a prayer on a pavement, and someone remarked he’s uncomfortable with the Saviour’s face on the ground…

I.

If you believe, then He is everywhere –

under each sole, beneath arches of feet,

in the minutest of grasses. In prayers

of chalk on asphalt on a peak hour street.

Does it unnerve you if He’s not always

smiling down at you from a lofty height? –

from a cross, a pedestal, carved cliff face,

hidden beyond the range of outer sight.

Too big for boots, He could very well choose

to look up at you from a pavement sketch,

and measure obeisance in passing shoes -

and they need not cautiously skirt the edge.

Don't worry, He can’t be trampled upon,

whatever the height, wherever He’s drawn.


II.

Didn’t He state unequivocally

that He is the Object of all worship?

the forms and rituals tweaked locally,

suitably adjusted for human grip.

You know no earthly murals can contain -

no carvings, no altars, no blocks of stone

mean anything, just a guide for the brain

which can’t grasp the formless, the unseen, unshown.

Everything, and nothing, is holy -

sacred’s not a place, it’s your mind, and mine.

He’s as much in buildings as in a lowly

coloured chalk drawing at a roadside shrine.

Don’t worry, He won’t be trampled upon.
He’s not just an idol, or icon.

"Those who worship other gods with faith and devotion also worship Me, Kaunteya, even if they do not observe the usual forms. I am the Object of all worship, its sole Consumer and the Lord." Bhagavad Gita, Ch 9:23.

Grey city

The skyline doesn’t change much, but underneath
a few doors close, keys turn firmly in their locks.
Never again the same those routes, entire cities -
as hearts and hearths both seep out from crumbling blocks.


Every year monsoons pour down and new vines reach
for a bolder grip, the banyan saplings stalk
the cracks between mortar and bricks, something’s breached
that can’t be made whole again with skill or talk.


The days and nights turn just like keys in keyholes
and they shut me out. Pulverise the bedrock
in rude light, trap me in tangled wires and poles
in broadened ruins of lanes and their aftershocks.


Each visit fewer paths and doors to call on,
no stones to turn, more bridges burnt. More alone.

This one was sparked off by a close aunt, who asked sometime ago - has Kolkata become a city for the aged? 

It hit home harder while I was there last month. A younger cousin was planning a move after almost a decade there. A good few houses in my circle are now locked up or sold off, because the senior generation is no more, and the younger ones have made their lives elsewhere. Each time I go back, there are progressively fewer people to call on, fewer roads to travel.

Kolkata has been greying for a long time now, deindustrialisation has meant jobs drying up. The city was once reputed for its premier institutes of education, but they got riddled with political interference way back and never recovered, with the result that many students today pursue post-16 studies in other parts of the country. All in all, young people are leaving in droves; the elderly are increasingly alone and isolated. Not exactly a brilliant recipe for happiness.