Fugitive

I do not know if this is the end of my life

or if there is such a thing as an end.

I do not know much,

I do not see the point as such.

Slowly like a choking mist

I have felt loneliness envelop me.

And increasingly in that mist, I have lost myself

and found happiness or something like it.

And bit by bit, I’ve found myself

getting faded, always jaded,

till nothing remains except my name

which has always been the same –

and a few misinformed anecdotes in the memory

of some people few.

This life of mine has always been askew.

It started wrong, never took flight,

I persevered but it never felt right.

Bones and dust, and life and rust,

all getting jaded, perpetually faded.

Like the forgotten memory of a bad play,

I disappear in small pieces and bits.

And in the timeless depths of chasms between those pieces –

I look to find happiness.

Or atleast something that feels a little like it.

*

5.50 AM

12^th February, 2012

Waterbearer of the Verandah Sills

It was the strangest kind of evening,

everything was calm, everything was poised and still.

There was time in the air

and laid bare, beyond were carpets of grassy gardens

without any music to keep them there.

The waterbearer moved before me.

His purpose a mystery, his movements most nuanced.

He swished his little vessel ,

cleaning apparently the verandah sills.

Neither slow, never too fast

with the toils of one who knows what he’s doing,

he went about, on this strangest kind of evening.

Inside the ornate halls, in the warm light of glassy lamps,

I marvel at the architecture. Mughal, is it?

Maybe a smattering of a British visit,

I reach the dining hall. There is a crowd here.

I do not care. I do not care.

I know you are here.

I know not how, but I know you have brought me here.

So I mill around, without smiling,

vaguely lost till I settle upon a solitary chair.

The show begins. The man speaks well.

The crowd loves him. Everybody is having a good time.

I am getting lost inside my head now.

Somehow, the words lose their meaning.

Nothing remains.

In this universe of incoherence and glee and light,

Only the sight of you rescues me and brings me back to life.

I remember you now, sitting with your beautiful friend –

beautiful, oh so exquisitely beautiful

that I remember not a single feature of hers.

I remember only you and your laugh ringing free,

your dress, your posture, your eyes

the only things I can see.

You remain enthralled, the man tells his stories.

I listen vaguely sometimes.

In the room behind him, he says,

there is a couple who’ve gone on an adventure

fifty-one times.

His speech rhymes.

The crowd clap in joy as he peeks behind the curtains again.

Fifty-two, he joyously proclaims,

the room erupts with laughter. You say to your friend,

“He is so funny”, but he says to us all,

that now, he must refrain.

The show dissolves into the ether,

I do not know what happened much.

The crowd buzzes noisily out to tea,

I think you’ll go with them but I do not look to find out.

I walk the opposite way out.

On my way I see many fabrics hung out,

their purpose a mystery, their make very nuanced.

I pick the ugliest out. Blue and wooley and stout.

It does not preen, it feels warm and sincere

and feels like its seen a stories few.

I pick it because it reminds me of you.

I walk out the verandah again.

It is definitely darker now.

The night is coming.

I like the ugly fabric’s touch

I do not like to feel much.

I slow down. I slow down.

The waterbearer is here again.

He still moves.

His purpose a mystery, his movements most nuanced.

He swishes his little vessel ,

Neither slow, never too fast

with the toils of one who knows what he’s doing,

he goes about, on this strangest kind of evening.

*

12:15 PM

25^th January, 2012

Rumblings in the forest

In the silent shadows of your great, great towers –
your missions and truths of endless powers,
lie a race of my most humble men.
Weak and fragile, we cower and we run,
we do whatever it is that you want to be done.
We speak simple things and we stay low
like we should.
and We nod our heads like we understood.
And so it has been for many a thousand year.
But...
even in the deep forests, do sometimes giant trees are fallen.
And the deafening roar of a maddening tidal wave
is preceded by the utter silence.
A quiet for a thousand years now,
I shudder to imagine how devastatingly loud
the madness now will be.

5: 45 PM
14th September, 2010

Anay

An insipid afternoon wasted by a red table,
the continuing vagaries of urban fables.
Here, the television speaks
here the computer croaks.
All the while, a jaded Anay watches listlessly -
the human sponge, he soaks.

6:38 PM
27th December, 2009

On a lonely night, by a glass of bourbon

The tired sea stretches on and on,
so lost and forlorn – without a song or a rhyme,
and no conception of geography or time.
Round the world it goes on for ages to return
to this still window of mine.
And by this window, I have been sitting for so long,
that now this still window too begins to whine.

1:58 AM
8th October, 2010

Song of the Little Princess

Little Princess, this is a wish
to see you grow & run
in an age where innocence is not undone.
To see you run, unfettered and wild and free
as only a soaring bird can be.
I wish upon you the solitude and silence
of big mountains green.
So you may walk in their shadows
and uncover all that is now, and has ever been.
And I wish upon you the grace and the romance
of the dark, hill cat.
The one who melts in with the night,
walks where she pleases and owns what she wants,
with memories that remain incomplete
and desires that forever haunt.
And lastly, my dear little princess,
the child and the angel of a million promises of dawn.
I wish upon you, the eyes of your mom.
The ones which hold the secrets
of that strange soliloquy of women
that look the happiest when they are the most forlorn.

2:12 AM
1st October, 2010

PS: Dedicated to a little princess on her first birthday, whose mother once had eyes I once loved too much for my own good

It is good to come back as a ghost

It is good to come back as a ghost
for you have been forgotten by the living.
It is good to come back as a ghost
and to lie on the grass and see the world spinning.
Drifting along some strange, lonely summer breeze
wafting by the fragrance of a lonely flower,
you stand in the vacuum of the universe
and contemplate time under the light of blue stars.
And there is time.
More time than you thought was ever there.
Dare if you will, for it will fill
all that you ever can remember and share.
And only in the emptiness of everlasting time
can you really find what you wanted the most.
& so it is, after the nostalgia of a million lost loves & tears
it is really good, to come back as a ghost.

*

9:53 AM
28th September, 2010