Thoughts

On a platform I stand,

the ground glides beneath my feet.

With the gale I sway

and the ground I shun.

In this calm, there are words.

These words seep into and from somewhere.

Then come stories

that I dread.

Photographs I refuse to stitch,

soar in speed first like trains I have met.

I gape at each dispassionately

long enough

until they turn coy and drip.

Leaving me with a new one.

But I do the same.

Till my tongue retires

and my speech goes to bed.

Desert

Have my rituals become futile?

Has my pride surpassed devotion?

I lay it sacred, do you not see?

Not a day slumbered without it.

But now, of it I am being deprived.

Should this dispirit me?

Is this my cue to impede?

Or must this coarsen me?

But why do you not expel the ache?

Are you not deserting me?

Pain

Starving for my thick-skin,

this hungry burning throb

meets me at the sole.

I flinch in pain,

as I bury hot teardrops

in the valleys of my cheekbone.

But mellow words from lovers, pierce harder.

‘No shield against compassion’,

I shrug and sigh and allow its sting.

The blissfulness that it is, oh!

What then are these mere blisters,

compared to that ardor?

Kashi

Here, the queenly Ganges flow.

Boats and lamps tread like fishes.

Some fast. Some slow.

Like that unfathomable depth of river,

is our grasp of life.

Here, on the doors, death knocks.

Loud, pounding on the ear and heart.

And then where Her eyes fell,

the forehead throbs and

when one sits, the ground slants.

Here, every meandering road leads

you to a shrine.

The twists of the lanes

stumbles you upon snake charmers,

betel leaves and wild trance.

Here, the air tastes of

incense sticks and pyre smokes.

The madness and the clatter though

seem to dwindle when eyes closed.

Here, silk and piety equally sought.

Here, cultures in the past madly fought.

Here, amid the dark wild manes of Shiva,

emerge the moon

that the river passionately echoes.

Here, poetry effortlessly lurks

at every nook.

Here, cows, birds and bulls

graze every alcove.

Here, one hears the dusky deathly knocks

and the cremation fires on riverfronts.

Here, stacks of wood wait

to burn the next dead.

In eagerness or indifference?

Indifference perhaps.

As millions of deaths it has already observed.

Guru

Oh! How you keep me waiting

for a taste of you.

Indulging in a game of hide and seek,

vaulting from wall to wall.

And finally, when I hold you by the eye,

in place of feeling triumphant,

I lay down my arms and sob.

Upon finding her lost child,

like the gentle mother would.

You smile and play the fool;

‘Am I not here now, Mother?

Why then do you moan?’

You are too sound to be true and here’s why I sob.

You are not just blood and bones,

but a vacuum, so vacantly lodged.

You are both the roaring sun and golden sand.

You are both the mirror and the mirrored.

You are plain music yet an intricate design.

You are ashes and flowers alike.

You are the vehement fire I burn to be and in.

You are where I have rested my time.

You are both words and pauses in my poetry.

You are but not only a child.

The teacher, the much-loved, you query.

Oh! Do you even now not realize?

My beloved Guru’s divine feet, to touch, I pine.

And that’s why I so tenderly cry.