Another way to return

You still go back panicked, groping the old songs,

blinded in tunnels, to soothe your roughed-up

spirit. The muddy river comes along

in broken down wooden barges, loved up

smooth old piers, worn rusted cranes dipping

their necks into the water, and no-one

comes to greet you, and no-one is gripping

fingers tight in comfort, lifting your burden.

You can hear the sunlight playing, somewhere

on the waters, a cowherd with cattle;

but here it’s just four small, chocolate squares

of light on blank concrete, and static crackle.

The news comes on in the evening, and it’s

floating seaweed, there’s gunfire in the distance

mushrooms of smoke and dust on wizened targets

and faces still lean out, clenched in resistance,

and refugees are portioned, as if we’re

barbecue nations. You don’t know if Suzanne

will show you her harbours, if she’ll let you near

the river’s wavelength, or if she at all, can.

A lot of things top-of-mind today.  First off, I'll be returning to the  A-Z, and no two ways about that. The sign up is today. Not only will I be participating, I am in deeper than previously this year because I am a Ninja Minion on Ninja Captain Alex J Cavanaugh's team. (If I knew the exact emoticon to express the yayness I would totally insert it here. But since I don't, just fill it in yourself)  I am also all signed up to participate in the Colours of Life Poetry Festival scheduled for mid-April, which is a(n offline) poetry event in my local community.

It's the fifth anniversary of the Egyptian Revolution today, so my friends there are very much on my mind too. Hope it goes safe and smooth and that they each get what they wish for in 2016, politically and otherwise.

Anyways, the upshot is - April is going to be a superbly amazing month! Can't-wait-but-also-love-the-waiting-and-working-writing-researching-rehearsing-part emoticon here. 

Have a great week!

Just one face

Time wrings the beauty out of everything -

the morning now just shattered shards of light,

the depth of darkness sucked off from the night,

the moon crushed, forlorn, like a crumpled mothwing.

The road’s shell shocked, the world’s a drunken camp,

the heart of workdays stifling, oppressive,

the weekends frazzled with no rest to give,

the days hamster wheels, the sun a rubber stamp.

Just one face in the crowd means breathe and dream;

just one glance, one word can forge a connect.

Just one face missing and decades are wrecked

and years become an angsty high-pitched scream.

We either speak too soon or speak too late;

the chance knocks once and does not know to wait.

The trick of a clothes horse

There’s a full length mirror, and a clothes horse

and as I look up suddenly, it seems

someone’s standing next to me, but of course

there’s no one there. A trick of light. A dream.

There’s no-one standing here, just empty sleeves

stirring as if they’d still go around me;

it’s only a short-lived spasm of half-sleep

an image conjured by solitude, a leap

of faith and air, transient, imaginary.

It’s only an empty coat, and the one

who wore it is never going to walk in.

A throb of air and light, a reflection

behind a silvered glass. Soon the dark will thin

dispersing the solace of illusion

as if it’s nothing; nor has ever been.

Bearing witness

I’m not at that bedside when life ebbs from it,

I’m not at the riverbank when the pyre’s lit.

But I’m lessened all the same wherever I am,

and I bear witness in the way my life permits.

And I bear witness to each of those lonely trips,

to the vast, unending silence of silent lips.

I hold it cradled within the heart of my life

through every throb of happiness and all hardships.

A close and a favourite relative has passed away back home and I do not have the heart today to craft and polish fancy metaphors.  Writing it as it comes, the good (and there was much good, he was such a lively and fun person that just hearing his voice was a mood-lift! Really, he could give the term joie-de-vivre an inferiority complex!), the bad, and the ugly.  His daughter is making a lonely trip today, the loneliest possible, starting out from USA to India, the longest and the most terrible of journeys for anybody, and although I can't be with her as I want to be, I am there in spirit. Remembering, honouring, celebrating and mourning him every step of the way.

Back at the tavern

Because I might face hardship ahead, should I stop?

my loved ones cannot come always alongside me;

forget the tavern, not even to the corner shop,

but the tavern doesn’t yet know how to be empty.

The winemakers distil the wine, slow drop by drop,

each glass is filled to its level by the saki

and each patron comes to claim his usual spot -

an empty tavern seat’s still a rarity.

I may dither all day whether to go or not -

the spaces shrink or expand as the need may be;

the tables are few, but the benches find space, allot

each one a place, squeeze them in or seat them easy.

The saki too serves the same level, the same wine

whether I drink with strangers; or friends of mine.

Let's start with a blank page...

The year stumbles on old cobblestones,

slip-slides a bit, loses its footing

the hour comes with anxious undertones

a nervous sidestep when no one’s looking

hold its face steady and never betray

the minor flaw that spoils the symmetry -

the old year’s more than its last day

the new  more than omens and augury

shut the frantic pulses of blood and bones

and nip the fears, let the hopes hang free

a year comes and a year turns away

and somewhere between a fresh start’s lurking.

Happy New Year 2016!

Synonym

Can’t say if he’s my north and south, my sea and earth,

but I know he’s my compass always pointing true.

He’s the track I lose sometimes, he’s its frantic search.

The jet contrail aiming home through the clearest blue.

He’s the stone fortress and its secret passageway;

the arched roof of tunnels; the stem of the goblet.

He’s the fizzing froth of light that makes up the day;

he’s that single star improving on the sunset.

Not my working week, no, he’s my blessed sabbath -

the spine of sacredness binding leaves of routine;

he’s my quiet street, my escape route, my private booth;

he is my ruby wine, he's my strongest caffeine.

He isn’t my voice or tongue, neither a song nor hymn.

He is not life or love.  Only their synonym.

Back at the usual spot on the couch after the travels, much enjoyed the break and enjoying being back at rest too. That closes my year here, which has been good, writing-wise and otherwise, closing it now with gratitude and hope. Happy New Year 2016!

Celebrating festivals that aren't quite your own

In that city, it is easy to slip

into the pretence that you’ve never left home -

all along the lanes of the Island

and along the riverside

there’s the same mauve petal-foam

of the jacaranda tree,

the same flamboyant firesparks

the gulmohur shreds on the roads,

the stone built citadel, the pointed arch

in the crumbling ancient walls.

If you look away a moment

and look quickly back again

they exactly echo the ones in

the ruins of the mausoleum

next to your old schoolbus-stop.

Write...Edit...Publish : and a pair of empty shoes

Okay, so this is one of the last posts for the year 2015, which seems to have zoomed past faster than I could say Write…Edit…Publish, but it’s also a first.  And not in a good way.  I am travelling and cannot participate in one of my  favourite blogfests.  The first time that I am a no-show at WEP – just gutted! This post is a bloggish version of a pair of empty shoes, you know, like that march in Paris recently before the climate conference. I can't be here, but hey, here I am, right over here at WEP! 

This month it's all about Holiday Celebrations Out of This World, writing up Sci-Fi flashes are some of the coolest bloggers, among them Denise and Yolanda.  Go visit them and check out the entries, and jump in with your own if you like. Judging the writing contest will be the Ninja Captain of the blogosphere, Alex J Cavanaugh, the Sci-Fi maestro and best-selling author of the Cassa series.


My posts for WEP have usually been flash or poetry, all entirely imaginary. This time, to mark my absence, I am scheduling a different post, factual, no-nonsense non-fiction  - the empty shoes of my imagination alongside the WEP-ers.

Earthrise on Christmas 1968
Source:NASA

For a school friend

Someone asks what’s on my mind, and I pause

for a second, because I can’t recall

the exact details, which class we met, what was

the surname, how many siblings in all.

But clear three shaky lines drawn with charcoal

topped with squiggly dashes to make the stumps -

the pretend-wickets dropped on that low wall,

the games of make-believe, the fights, the thumbs

clicked against teeth, the k-word, the huge lump-

in-throat walk home alone. The making-up

next morning without adult fuss, the sum

of long-lost friendship, easy childhood love.

Someone asks me what; I pause a sec and say,

“Nothing. Just an old friend. His birthday today.”

I am travelling and will catch up with you when I get back.  Meanwhile, wish you all the joys of the season, and a very happy, peaceful and fun 2016.

Revisit - School

Credit

The gateman straightaway knows me, perhaps

an inspired guess, or plain logic.

A long-time adult, as clock hands clap,

comes to look at an old school building -

who else but a former student? Longing

to touch once again those exposed bricks.

A road that was travelled day after day,

its twists and turns now made strange

by years of separation; staying away

has meant the asking of odd questions.

The poignant stop to ask directions,

face and eyes burn at the first sting of change.

School’s out now, shut for the winter break;

the classrooms and the long corridors

stand empty and dumb, somewhat bleak

without children’s voices raised or hushed;

blackboards wiped, not even chalk dust’s

faint perfume floats on the floors.

Bleakness has come in different forms -

fields squeezed into classrooms blocks,

bars on windows once left free.  Tighter norms.

But the old, benign drinking station?

That’s still smiling at its position,

the spot for much merry laughter and talk.

Stern iron gates stand with their arms crossed,

stop me at the stairs. The breeze whispers once.

They’re out of bounds now, some freedoms lost

to surge down in a mass at the last bell.

The school’s broken up into floors, stairwells,

order’s replaced happy exuberance.

I turn away from the stairs, leave the school

without walking up to my last classroom.

Wistfulness rarely works; as an obvious rule

past memories and the present don’t match.

Futile then to attempt to snatch

peace from change and closed volumes.

And yet being able to once touch those bricks,

to walk corridors that had once known

my faltering steps and childish tricks,

dribbles a stream of peace into the day;

something lifts, perhaps wrapped dismay

after years of constantly being worn.





For school friends who are meeting up in Delhi under those exact exposed brick arches.  Wishing you all a great reunion, happy holidays and a wonderful 2016!

Guess my Guest? Talk about Gothic Tales. And Tuscan Moons.

Guess who I am saying 'namaste' to today right here? Denise Covey! Who co-hosts Write...Edit...Publish  and needs no introduction. I've known her for many, many Moons, since the infancy of my blogging days. A blogger, teacher, and author whose varied works I admire and enjoy hugely, Denise straddles across several genres, contemporary romance and paranormal, travel writing and self-help and chick-lit. Today she is talking about Gothic novels and the making of her paranormal romance, Under the Tuscan Moon.  All yours, Denise, take it away -

I love writing contemporary romance, but I also like to dabble in the paranormal. If  you're not familiar with paranormal romance, it’s a combination of romantic fiction and speculative fiction. Paranormal romance’s focus is on romantic love, but it includes elements beyond the range of scientific explanation. It blends together themes from the speculative fiction genres of fantasy, science fiction and horror. 

In my first paranormal novella, Under the Tuscan Moon, I have combined these elements with a heavy dose of the Gothic I so love.

The Second Attack

I get these attacks sometimes, the first time it happened was fairly scary - you can read about that here.  I have not studied Hindi beyond grade 2, so the less said about my sense of grammar the better, especially my knowledge of the genderised nouns/verbs/adjective agreement.  However, the voice inside my head cares nothing for grammar or any rules, or my diffidence, it nags incessantly till I get fed up and paste things into a screen.  

The precursor for this attack is a poem - ahista chal zindagi (walk slowly, Life..) it's been making the rounds on FB recently and was on my feed several times. And this is my response, the counterpoint, loosely in the format of a ghazal which came less formed than the previous one, but still enough to unnerve me :)

Arz kiya hai....

ए ज़िन्दगी ज़रा तेज़ चल अब यहाँ और ठहरना क्या?
करवट बदलते बेचैन पल, इनके खाली हाथ, और करना क्या?

जहाँ सोचा था बसेरा है, दिन निकला, तो लगा अंजाना सा,
अपनों की पहचान खूब हुई,और ग़ैरों से बिछड़ना क्या?

तू लाख जतन  कर ले पर दर्द मिटता नहीं, ज़ख्म भरते नहीं
कंकर पत्थर ठोकरों से बस इन घावों को भरना क्या?

दिन चार, लेकिन ग़म हज़ार, इन हज़ार ग़मों के मेले में
टूटे हुए रिश्तों  के टुकड़ो पर पिछड़ना क्या, बढ़ना क्या?

सुनसान कूचें में दामन थामा, दाग लगा तो झटक दिया,
वह दाग ही कब दामन बना, अब इसे पकड़ना क्या?

तेरी हर मीड़ से वाक़िफ़ हुए, तेरी हर राह का धुंधलापन,
क़दम बड़ा किसी और ओर, इस राह से फिर गुज़रना क्या?

यह तू ने कैसी बात छेड़ दी के अपनी रफ़्तार से चलना है
एक तू ही है बाक़ी रिश्तों में तुझ से लड़ना झगड़ना क्या?

ऐसे भी कई लोग थे कभी जिनके दिल में शामिल दिल यह था,
न वहां न यहाँ धड़कता है, तो जीना क्या और मरना क्या?

कुछ वक़्त गवां दीया  तू ने भी और कुछ मुझ से भी ज़ाया हुआ,
पर कह लीया जो कुछ कहना था अब आगे शेर और पड़ना क्या?

ए ज़िन्दगी ज़रा तेज़ चल....

Hello, December!

There is a stripping back, a certain falling off,

a darkness to the light, an awareness to the love;

a slight holding in where there was gush and rush;

a sharpness to the winds, and a sparseness to the words,

a clicking into place where enough can be enough

and not an iota more, a distaste for too much;

a tying up of leaves, an end to risk-averse,

a paring of the sky. A yearning for the nub.