Daily celebration

I did not bring up love this month, because

it felt improper to mark the personal.

The inside jobs of lawmakers and laws,

burnt tyres, broken arches - a huge betrayal

took up all the space. Smoke and vitriol

fogged every screen, an ineffable loss

in the arcs of batons and gun barrels,

shattered glass, smashed promises strewn across

the city. But then you should not equate -

this glancing away, maybe a brief silence,

a preoccupation with the external –

none of these you should consider equal

to change, and certainly not indifference.

Love’s still something I daily celebrate.

Happy birthday, Baba.

And you might enjoy looking back at this as well.

Short sighted but clear eyed

My perspectives are closer to the ground –

lower than a bird, higher than a worm

just the everyday heights, nothing profound,

somewhere in between the long and short term.

Somewhat near confused, but still quite clear eyed

to recognise the truth at the first try,

and they know truth’s on which side of the divide,

even when it’s blurred, made up as a lie.

Don’t come to me with your spins on history.

I know what’s what, the lay of this land,

sharp enough still to see through your sophistry

however short my sight, and shaky my stand.

Traditions

I fear I am a poet, tradition bound

to mostly ignore systems – documents -

though I’ll use paper to scribble around

to hold onto some meanings, and moments.

I do use paper, I will freely admit

and I don’t abhor the screen, I’m using one -

but some nerve rebels if I’m asked to show it.

I won’t comply. That too is tradition.

You see, paper’s fragile. Identity

is carried somewhere else, in the stories

of foremothers travelling from one city

to the next, braiding streams, estuaries.

Through many rivers, borders, crisscrossed lands;

tradition too, the tangling of those strands.

Flexi-identity

What kind of papers? Will this portrait do?

My aunt had drawn it on a whim, freehand,

many years ago. I was twenty two.

The eyes are the same. You must understand –

I wasn’t written into the family tree

since that would mean rubbing me out again

upon marriage. We’re flexi-identity.

Daughters. Wives. A multitude of women

each one of us. Okay, what about this?

My father’s letter, mailed from Najafgarh,

the postmark is clear, the name and address.

Will this be proof enough to consider?

Well, that’s it. I can’t show you anything else

except old letters, treasures, some torn bills.

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.

Take it back!

I refuse to shrink to a plastic card,

a stamped deed for a factory or courtyard,

an affidavit, a certificate,

a timid thumbprint on some ancestral debt.

Not for me your laws on citizenship.

I am the soil, the berth, the landing strip.

I’m the weed, the waving grass, the creeping vine

that covers the rubble of all your designs.

I grow everywhere out of all the cracks

in your architectures of bills and acts.

How will you stop me? - I’m the rolling clod

which is small in size but its world is broad.

No, not for me your thoughtless wall and fence,

I’m the tiny blade and the soil immense.

I was planning a nice feel good festive post this week, but what with all that's going on back home, kind of impossible to achieve.  

Season's greetings to you and yours and warmest wishes for an awesome New Year 2020!