At the Corniche

They are far out, walking the promenade;

and returning flamingos group in the bay -

the pulsing reflections of pink and grey

are an echo from sunsets past, the mud

exposed at low tide, shimmery with facades

of buildings and a too early neon ad.

A woman runs, the winds billows her robes,

tugs her scarf askew, the last sunlight probes

contours of waves and time, breathes and shreds

itself on lampposts, glow-in-the-dark keypads,

headlights, taillights, sodium yellow and red.

There are small spaces carved for fluorescent

twilight shades, the impossibly transient.

The father and son, small figures are dotted

on the grey paved concrete thread far ahead.

Content isn’t concrete, corniches, rooms;

it’s just a minute to feel the continuum.




Still trying to pin down definitions of happy and happiness. I know it when I see it - unmistakeable. Have a happy week ahead.

In my house there are a hundred half-done poems

All of these poems unfinished, spaces crammed

full of half-uttered words, inert, tongue tied.

Interrupted windows, staircases jammed

with mindless tics and turns and asides,

with untaken steps to retrace, strengths untried

to fling the whole purpose away, start again.

Nothing feels it’s honed to a polished end,

tightened so well that it won’t spring open

next season, at the touch of buttons. Fattened

enough for blades. Lean enough to be deadened.

A hundred of them precarious, unravelled -

each memory in its groove wrongly filed;

some thumbsore, others ignored, mishandled.

The woods and cells and walls poorly styled,

imperfect the rhymes and rugs, unreconciled.

Nothing finds a closure in a short lifetime -

the entire house left open by a crack of rhyme.

First thing in the morning today I read about Om Puri passing away, and the title line which is from a famous Mary Oliver poem called 'Thinking of Swirler' flashed into my mind. And that line kind of ambled into this poem. A sonnet-ish form of my own, with an extra line after each quatrain. Fattened, if you like, ready for the blade.

'Each of us leaves an unfinished life.' Indeed.  Om Puri was a favourite in my cine-going days in Delhi, when I frequented the Indian Panorama at the film festivals, because they were the cheaper tickets - available for two-three rupees each.  The foreign films too of course, as many as I could afford. Om Puri was starting out those days, and rose to a major force in Indian Parallel Cinema. I remember some mesmerising performances by him - Aakrosh, Ardh Satya, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Sadgati, he was flawless in every film. 

As I left India mid-nineties, my relationship with Indian Cinema became a little distant subsequently.  I haven't watched any of his later films, but I have followed his career. Beyond saddened at his passing, and a little shaken too - has the loss of Western artistes that characterised all of 2016 somehow infected India now?? 

Mr Puri, you will be sorely missed.

T is for Towering...and Tagore

Tagore, Rabindranath (1861 -1941)

Rabindranath Tagore was a polymath - born to an aristocratic Bengali family, he was a poet, novelist, song writer, playwright, essayist, artist, educator and visionary.  He was the first non-European to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.  Tagore introduced new verse forms and prose techniques in Bengali, modifying the rigid 'classical' written language to one that was closer to the spoken form and more intimate. He reshaped Bengali and Indian culture in far reaching ways.  In short, he is to Bengali what Shakespeare is to English.  He was also awarded a knighthood, but surrendered it in protest against the British brutality in Jalianwala Bagh in Punjab.  

I grew up with his nursery rhymes, songs and poems, fiction and musicals - 'dance-drama' as all Bengalis of my generation do.  Today my prompt is his poem Where the Mind is without Fear written in the context of colonial oppression and the Indian resistance to it, which is still read and revered wherever freedoms are valued.

It'll be okay - either way

I.

I will let your words take me wherever they want

in time, in space, in spaces of the mind

to their immeasurable, ancient battlefronts

where weapons and words are both ill-defined

and uncertainty stares at me with its blind

eyes and blinding terror.  I shall not be afraid

to crawl, and fall, openly petrified,

vulnerable underbelly defenceless, blades

grazing the tender skin then ripping it wide

but I’ll press on without thoughts of turning aside;

it’s a long road to where the mind can be fearless

but I shall not cavil with you, I’ll accept

wherever they lead, peaks and valleys of darkness

I’ll follow them through every crevice and cleft,

jagged stone, without once looking right or left.

If in the end, there’s nothing gained, no epiphany

then that’s fine too, no complaints, no words from me.

II.

One footstep on solid rock, the next on scree,

an endless path sans charms, sans destination,

every footfall an empty torment, no greenery

to lighten loads – barrenness, futility.

Even in that there’s a seed somewhere, a life lesson.

The paths spin their scenes and their own purpose

and every seed, whether it sprouts or is hidden,

will come to mean something, small but momentous

without the jolts and bolts, without drama and fuss.

All words and seeds ripen in time and split open.

And yours will too, I’ll carry them cupped like grain

in my hand and hold them close and walk on

step after step. Torment is just a terrain -

degrees of slope, sharpness of rock, flats of plain.

All paths peter out with time and are redrawn.

And if in the end, they don’t flatten, and nothing’s gained

then that’s fine too, I’ll keep the grain, and no complaint.

T is also for Tennyson, whose Ulysses is one of my favourite poems across all poets and and all times. Enjoy!

T is for Trouble, which I had last night trying to find bloggers that are still keeping on with the A-Z.  Among the ones I clicked, several had stopped. Not a wildly successful reading session. A bit disheartening that but never mind, I shall Trudge on. Tomorrow is another day :)

Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2015

Riki's Prayer

Image : Riki Roy

The prompt

"Can you write me a poem too or a prayer whichever you like...where my ashes be strewn in the Rockies near Jasper..as I am in love with the place...and may I be born in Canada to snowboard in Jasper's amazing slopes...where my hubby is my instructor and I fall in love with him again in a new time and place and we marry amongst the singing slopes and enchanting lakes..."

The poem

I.

Snowmelt’s going to be washed to the oceans

someday anyway, so give my ashes to

a fresh snowfall laid at the feet of mountains,

give them to the arms of pinewoods,  the immense

worlds tucked in a print of a caribou.

Give them, my love, to the vast stillness, the flakes

dancing to the leaps and whims of snowstorms,

trembling on the ribbed ripples of tranquil lakes

and when the universe finally remakes

them, may they again take a woman’s form.

May I be reborn around these mountains, close

to these spring-touched fields, these winter-bright slopes;

and one day quite by chance walking these snows

may we meet again where the conifer grows

as stars pin clouds in place with their sapphire drops.

May I be born here on the ridge of a mountain,

come face to face with you, and fall in love again.

II.

Let me be grateful for each scar, each success,

every step taken with you by my side;

and every step taken alone in some dim recess

of memory, but special nevertheless

because each led here, where our paths coincide.

Let me be grateful for wonder and its huge breadth,

the depth of my passion, the lightness of mischief;

the bonds between us that persist beyond death

and the ken of humans, beyond narrow faiths

and streams speckled with leaf-shadows of grief.

And grateful for each grain of sand and grit,

the barefoot mornings, carefree and wriggly-toed

coming in with summers swinging at their hips.

For the jewelled ice on winter nights’ fingertips,

for pristine snows on hard shoulders of the road.

Grateful that you test the knots, ease every climb

just by going ahead or backing me up all the time.

III.

Praying that when I’m remade in some future birth

I walk along this same majestic icefield;

or wavy tracks on a slope where snow’s disturbed,

a red helmet moves against the sky and earth

in graceful loops; and again, my fate is sealed.

It’s déjà vu, “I know you! from someplace else,”

you’re nonplussed but too polite to contradict.

Far below, the green lake ripples, the snowmelts

chuckle gently, trickle soft in their channels.

You’re visibly relieved as I change the topic,

“I’d like to learn snowboarding, give me a try?”

and you unstrap and step off, ever courteous.

I’m shaky as I mount, and your palm’s a sigh.

Thunderstruck at this touch, your smile’s awry -

you finally make the connect between us.

“Notice the helmet’s still red, what does that prove?”

the board steadies underfoot as I start to move. 

For my dear friend Riki Roy, with thanks and much love and friendship. May she be guided to her love and happiness unerringly, in every life that is granted her, and may they both be equally inspirational partners in all of them, as they are now. 

This one is strictly 'write as it comes' - no editing, no over-thinking, posted as soon as written, from the heart to brain to blog in half a morning's work over three consecutive days.  I hope I have been able to do justice to the prompt, Rik.

A prayer for Riki Roy

Credit: Riki Roy

Snowmelt’s going to be washed to the oceans

someday anyway, so give my ashes to

a fresh snowfall laid at the feet of mountains,

give them to the arms of pinewoods,  the immense

worlds tucked in a print of a caribou.

Give them, my love, to the vast stillness, the flakes

dancing to the leaps and whims of snowstorms,

trembling on the ribbed ripples of tranquil lakes

and when the universe finally remakes

them, may they again take a woman’s form.

May I be reborn around these mountains, close

to these spring-touched fields, these winter-bright slopes;

and one day quite by chance walking these snows

may we meet again where the conifer grows

as stars pin clouds in place with their sapphire drops.

May I be born here on the ridge of a mountain,

come face to face with you, and fall in love again.

For my dear friend Riki who leads the most extraordinarily inspirational life and who wishes to be reborn where she now lives and loves. We were reading some verses together, and she asked for a prayer/poem about being reborn in the Rockies.  Stay blessed and happy, Rik.

Quinnet : Claustrophobia

Folded paperwings origami art

flocked vultures coming to rest in the throat

waiting for the kill for the feast to start;

and whipsharp creases on a shrinking heart

a terrible scream that can’t find its note.

Take them off, wipe them away from their perch

stop the quickthree bound of those yellow claws.

I am the island, they the relentless surge

of slavering waves that come in greedy search

every crumb of soil pecked up by toothless maws;

toothless but keen the talons and the beak

concentric rings of claustrophobia

the drawstrings pulled too tight, breathlessly bleak

the throat spasms and stills for it must not shriek

there’s no toehold on escape over here.

Whisk me back quick to those wide-hipped mainlands

of skypink birds, honeywarm grass and sands.

I have been experimenting with variations on fixed forms :) I call this one a quinnet, a sonnet with five line stanzas instead of four.  The concluding couplet remains.  Seventeen instead of fourteen lines, prime numbers are so much more elegant :) What do you think of the form? Of the poem? and experimental verses?