Blended

Kathmandu, Nov 2025.

You snap suddenly awake, just before dawn

and spot the sunrise, in a sky tinged pink

as dark and light shade into each other,

cross hatched and blended like a pen and ink

image, vaguely familiar, drawn upon,

drawn behind what passes for another

day - happiness and grief stop being distinct. 

Did you guess it will come to be a series

of golds and coppers and lilacs blending,

fading in, fading out at the horizons?

Day containing night in a never ending

loop. The shapes of flowers, leaves, entire trees

coalescing into a sharp remembrance.

The screen, the house, emptied yet upright, standing. 

From Nagarkot.

I've been travelling - first to Mumbai to visit the senior-most family members remaining and then to Kathmandu to visit the Himalayas. November is an introspection month, as the year draws to a close, I am prone to stocktaking - a habit leftover from my working days Every year comes with its own mix of challenges and triumphs, it's got increasingly harder to classify each one into neat compartments of great and not so great. The older I get, the more the contentment bleeds into grief and vice versa - the not so great is surrounded and subsumed by the great. 

We all come to an understanding of these blurred boundaries  in our own individual ways - the Himalayas seem to be my definitive route. They've taught me over the years that the sums are difficult to tally, to not even try. That I am myself just a mish mash of discrete memories stacking up year after year, but they cannot be toted up to give a firm quantity, positive or negative, this much or that. Some equations are best left unresolved.

Bhaktapur

In Nepal, I saw exquisite wooden carvings on buildings ancient and contemporary - windows and door shutters, struts and columns. And I immediately thought of my father, who was an architect and insanely fond of teakwood and sculptural art of all kinds. I saw a stone idol of a deity and my mother came to mind, her voice chanting her japa mantra. I saw a wildflower blooming on a slope and remembered a lost friend.  None of it felt sorrowful or heavy, on the contrary it made, no makes, me strangely happy that all those who've gone before me remain so much a part of myself that they pop up at random moments at places to which they've had absolutely no connection whatsoever. I think I've come to like this blurring of all lines between the sorrowful and contentment and thankfulness, this slow seepage and blending of happiness into grief. Or is it the other way round? Who knows? Ennyways.

I hope your month is going well and some top-class blending is happening at your end too. 

Fernweh

 

All round me is autumn, but over there it’s spring.

The lure of a distant season’s strong. Everything

here’s gold, but it’s a withered gold – the end is near,

there it’s newly green, different world and hemisphere.

I’ve dived into that world,  and I’ve been forced up too

and home wasn’t home anymore, all strange and new –

it morphed to a restlessness, a vague sharp ache

for distant worlds once touched, and those I’d hoped to make.

Not that they’re not splendored, the withered, the yellowed,

but there’s a yen to be again on unknown roads

to drink once more from some strange stream, to face crosswinds

never felt, to plumb worlds never quite imagined.

Not that these are not enough – they are. They are.

But there’s a lure to green and gold that’s somewhere far.

If you google the title -  the straight translation is wanderlust, but I like a different one that explains it as 'farsickness' or 'farsoreness.' Way more on point. I'm quite often farsick. A friend posts pictures of fall colours in the higher latitudes and presto! - farsick. Another puts up ones of flamboyants blooming in the southern hemisphere - farsick.   Yet another shares travel pictures from Africa - you get the idea. 

I'm a constant tug of war between wanting nothing more than to be curled up on the couch at home and to escape it and get thousands of miles away this instant. Armchair travel is one way of indulging the farsoreness. Poetry is one too. There are a thousand virtual ways to escape. 

However, I'm pleased to report that I'm off the hills in a couple days for a much needed break. Most unvirtual, though in the same hemisphere and season. Back next week. Till then keep well and happy. See you soon.

Numbers mean nothing

 

Mariner's Reach, Denarau, Fiji.

How many nights must you spend under a roof,

before you can call it a home?

Some say just thirty, others a thousand,

but I say to you – listen closely, my friend,

there’s no magic number, no theorem that proves

the time span that seals your claim.

A few aches are certain every time you move.

Thirty or thousand it’s all the same.

 

But there’s that horizon, oceans that heave,

a pink sky so breathtaking,

and a bird call can fling your life open.

Home has its place, but the wider world beckons,

your feet forget themselves and pack to leave,

done with walls and the same dawns breaking.

One step. And two. Dust eddies round your feet

and somewhere a welcome is waiting.

 

There’s that long horizon, pathways that twist

in and out of unknown forests.

The light is a tunnel that lures like a trap,

the ribs of leaves are rivers on a map,

the breeze writes gently on your back and lists

the things that can unravel rest.

And somewhere a welcome is waiting amidst

strangers’ smiles to the east or west.

 

Here it is cosy, the smoke from the stove

spiced with cinnamon and anise.

Secret garnets in the depths of tamarind,

the slow unfolding music of the winds,

butterfly wings in someone’s mango grove

in some weird definition of bliss.

The paddies are furred and rich, seen from above –

the world has its place. So has this.

 

So that’s it – you’ll sway, swing back, twang away,

the horizon just out of range.

The airplanes will keep flying overhead

to different cities with others instead.

The ships will weigh anchor and go on their way –

you’ll always be chasing change.

And you’ll wonder how many nights and days

make home and what makes a roof strange.

 

All your days you’ll fritter away in research

and find that numbers mean nothing.

Only the movement of road, car and coach,

the aerial view of a strange town’s approach,

the spiral of descent, the craft’s thrilling lurch,

the horizons in blues and pinks.

Only being out and away by and large

gives roofs their final meaning.

Welcome to M-i-V! - now based out of Kolkata! Hopefully, for good. I thought I'll post a bit early since I've been away for so long...and say things in...um...slightly more expansive wordcounts. It's also been the longest time since I wrote anything more than a 14 liner. In fact the last long-ish poem I wrote was in 2017 - Remembering Zeinabu. 

The pandemic years have made me shrink in many ways, this is one of them. However, it's time to put that behind me and open up a bit - it's the fourth year of the Big P and my store of small p patience was never really robust. Neither is my word (limit) control. Expect longer stanzas, line counts, ramblings...thank you for reading and your time!

There's lots happening this month, both on the personal front and online. The offspring has come home for a few days and the aforesaid home looks like a disaster zone, but who cares? It's good to have the family under one roof, even if it is only for a fortnight. I hope to be back to regular posts here, also get back to my normal reading as and when I am able to straighten the house out. A few aches are certain every time you move...I'm finding many layers of meaning in that line. The bookshelves are full, even though in complete disarray, a hodgepodge of Bengali, English and genres - Emily D is next to Asimov and just looking at that is freaking me out... :) There's no way anyone can ever locate a specific book in this current mess. That's a job that needs tackling pronto but will have to wait till son flies back to uni. 

Online, there's WEP, the Chocolat Challenge, I can't say enough about that deliciousness however many wordcounts you allow me... so excited! And looking forward to what people write for this one!

I hope the month has started well for you and may it continue throughout. Have an awesome August! See you soon.

Shipment

Credit 

 

Too much time was spent defining home and away

by leaf shadows, textures of mud, length of the stay,

the fauna that flies, and that swims, comes back to spawn,

the shape of the constellations and of the lawn.

 

The cups we held once, and those that we lost, or chipped.

what was left behind and what was finally shipped.

Too much effort went into piling on the floors

what was mine by right, by grace; and what was yours.  

 

When the containers came to port and were unpacked

everything was mixed up inside, nothing neatly stacked -

had the cups come home or had they travelled away?

whose they’d been before the trip and now whose were they?

 

A few cups were shipped on a voyage through the sea -

they blurred notions of ownership, and of destiny.

Trips

 

Prayer bunting at the Dhamekh Stupa, Sarnath.

Every trip’s a pilgrimage, with its own

little sacredness, with its small bunting

fluttering on a chain link fence somewhere

a hallowed symbol scratched on a milestone

vaguely sacred numbers, an ankh, an om

forming suddenly like a fallen prayer

as the light changes, a flash of gull wings –

and every pilgrimage is also home.

 

And each cobblestone’s a bamboo ladder

to some other plane, to someplace else

that smoothens the circuits, and makes gladder

the heart that comes to a standstill and marvels.

Each trip has its own sanctity. Purpose.

Each step’s electric. And miraculous.

I was in Lucknow, Varanasi and Sarnath over the new year and ticked off the original of the Ashoka Pillar, and also a few other things, from ye olde buckete liste. Juuust ducking out of the way of the third wave. Now its back to the same old, same old scary boring pathways of the pandemic. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.  I hope the new year is treating you well. 

Cleaning the case

 

The sunset’s like a chromatograph

the pinks travel faster than blues.

I’m clearing the clutter from my bags

decades of paper residues -

foldable maps that fit in wallets

from trips in far places, now collapsed

loose currencies in zippered pockets,

coupons of the vanished and lapsed.

Clean darkness wipes out the mess of clouds,

my cases too are stripped of stubs,

the pocket corners duly turned out

the labels off, the metal rubbed.

Yet there’s a faint patch - that stubborn glue

just won’t come off whatever I do.

Mirrored

I saw the lights on a mighty waterfall

and a rainbow bridge connecting the two sides.

I heard six-lane roads running parallel

to rivers, strange leaf shadows amplified

by the angle of light on woodland trails,

albeautiful, all never seen before;

yet they felt like reflections, the blurred details

the water picks up from the river shore -

as if this life flowing someplace elsewhere

had been a surface for those reflections,

as if the gradients, the clouds, the flare

of sails and sunsets had really begun

long before they were finally encountered,

mirrored in the mind before being seen or heard.

X is for...um...erm..Ashra...and...'Xplorers

is for

X ala X  

which is a 2016 hit from this new artiste Sultan, very catchy, very joyous. Ten is ashra in Arabic incidentally, and dig that double clap and that little shruggy move Sultan does, ooh some music mojo! All this rhythmic hand clapping reminds me of the subcontinental tradition of Qawwali songs.

'Xplorers

Historically, the Arabs were inveterate travellers. Most of them were ordinary people, traders or merchants, who travelled thousands of miles between Arablands and other shores, but left no records. Other cultures and peoples did however, and a quote from a Roman writer, “…And the whole place is crowded with Arab ship-owners and seafaring men, and is busy with the affairs of commerce; for they carry on a trade with the far-side coast...” shows that Arabs have been building ships and sailing the Indian Ocean long before Islam came to Arabia.

Arabs have always had a seafaring tradition, think of the Arabian peninsula and the reasons are obvious – it has a long coastline, surrounded on three sides by the sea. Second, the coasts are separated from the interiors by mountains and deserts, sea routes are more accessible, and lastly, the coastal areas offered easier options to live off them than the interior. Add to the long Arabian coastline, the Nile in Africa, the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers to the East, and we get an effective transport hub, sitting at a strategic location between the East and the West. 

Once Islam came to Arabia, travel got a further fillip – every able bodied practitioner of the new faith was required to make the pilgrimage to Mecca at least once. But apart from the journeys required by faith or livelihood, there were travellers who went out just for the love of it. Wanderlust - there was an epidemic of it among the early Arabs it seems! A few of the famous Arab travellers -

Mohammed ibn Battuta (1304–1368/9) Moroccan scholar, writer and traveller. Travelled extensively in Africa, Middle East, Central Asia, India, Sri Lanka, China.  Wrote of his travels in Rihla (Travels). 

Al Masoodi – (~890’s–956) Known as the Herodotus of the East. Travelled to Syria, Armenia, the Caspian Sea, Indus Valley, Sri Lanka, Oman, the East Coast of Africa. Wrote widely, most well-known for Muruj ad-Dahab wa Ma’adin al Jawaheer (The Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems).

Ibn Jubair (1145-1217) From Al Andalus, Spain. Travelled to Mecca and recorded the trip.  Covered Egypt, Mecca, Medina and Sicily. 

Ibn Fadlan (10^th century) Travelled to Bulgaria as ambassador of the Abbasid Caliphate. Wrote of his travels up the Volga River.

Ahmed ibn Majid (1421-1500?) Born in Oman, traveller, navigator. Wrote detailed treatise on navigation, marine science and oceanography. The most well-known is Kitab al Fawaadh fi-Usul Ilm al Bahrwa al Qawaidah (The Book of Benefits of the Principles of Seamanship).

There are several others – Al Mahri, Al Muqaddasi, Ibn Hawqal…and not enough time/space/word allowance to cover all of them.  






Phew! am I glad that's over??  X is tough enough in English already, without trying to wrestle it into Arabic :) Did you know - Ibn Battuta's Xylophones are the oldest surviving specimens, kept in the museum at Khayalliya in North Africa?












(okay I just made that up to fit the post, clueless whether he collected xylophones, or played the instrument! :D and Khayalliya doesn't eXist either to the best of my knowledge and belief. Creative licence folks, needed nowhere else as much as X)





Posted for the A-Z Challenge 2017 

Steam requiem

You come to a point in that field, and there

the winds are mussing the crops' long hair,

and out of the next window, half shuttered - 

a farmer at lunch, a whirlpool of birds.

The thresh of blurred gravel next to the wheels.

On the far side another one reveals

a moment of bamboo, a flash of fig -

a station rolls past, the platforms - red brick

and yellow signage, commuters everywhere  -

but it’s diesel now, or clean electric.

In Between

Source

This post’s late because all day yesterday

I travelled between my homeland and home -

curried cubed fish and three small golap jaam

were served for lunch in a neat airline tray;

though deboned fish isn’t the Bengali way

it was still festive, throwback to the drums

still being played at the marquees. I heard them

at 30,000 ft somewhere near Bombay.

All day yesterday I travelled between

being a mother and a daughter, a parent

to parents and child. On my in-flight screen

old Hindi films spooled out dramatic events,

a three-hour ten-minute stopover meant

thinking what 'mother' has now come to mean.

Expandable

It has its own pockets in the backpack

and carries its stuff quite independent

of what you might want – the old cobbled lanes,

the bridge over the darkening blue-black

river at dusk; and petrichor; the ambient

shapes of trees weeping softly in the rains.

It’s one of those bags that unzips down its length

and expands to fit in all manner of things -

stuff you thought you’ll never need again:

a foreign square, the citizens out in strength;

the lilt of the azaan as it parts the evenings;

a public bath awash with laughing women.

Each departure is a rehearsal of sorts

for the final one with zero allowance;

you sort the stuff, prioritised, precise,

pack just the tent and its vital supports.

You shed things as you go in accordance

with the scriptures and what the wise advise.

Yet in some pocket of memory, or flesh

a small coin, some stubs of minor events

are overlooked and travel everywhere;

what you thought you shred tumbles out afresh

and the morning’s raw with what it represents

to trash it again is more than you can bear.

So you put it away again in some flap

where it won’t obtrude or escape meanwhile;

thrust it deep behind some or other task.

The minutes move in tiny tip-toed recaps

and your eyes are moist even as you smile,

but you say, “It’s nothing!” if someone asks.

Who moved my quays?

I.

I forget.  I forget where I started out, who was with me.

Were you there? And you? It’s only now I have noticed

that I am walking alone.  Cobbled pathways in a different city.

Sea waves out in force on rocky shores shattering the dawn mist.

There is so much comfort and warmth in a group

Friends, strangers, the neat categories of acquaintance,

stifling heat of laughter.  Never the chill of holding aloof,

never walking alone with the dawn spray even once.

Every seashore, every path is precious, tender, dawn fresh

when I am alone. Hard footsteps ring on stone

clear and solitary amidst the muted, relentless rush

of wind or water. Undisturbed. Elements on their own.

I forget where I started out, but when I loop back again

I stand at that same spot with you, where the journey began.

II.

I’m not sure if I moved off, or you dropped one by one

like leaves do by the wayside and then are dribbled away

by careless feet, by the sweeping reckless walk of women -

the brush of hems and borders. Things that heave and sway.

I only noticed when the wind blew harder into my hair

when I was thrown to the silences, when the spray struck at my cheek.

As the cold crept up my exposed skin without this barrier -

the crush of bodies absorbed into the chatter of group-speak.

All this spray that stings my face, every wind that billows

into my hair and my clothes in needle sharp profusion

every press of step on stone, every road that goes

winding alone into blinded corners - none of them feels foreign.

I’m not sure who left whom, who wanted to stay or quit

But wherever I stop, I find your face at every point of transit.