Commotion

On Friday evenings after work,

while walking to the Subway station,

brushing aside pangs of anxiousness,

I stand outside the Rockefeller,

and look at the people

looking at the famous X-Mas tree.

It’s a swarm of selfie sticks.

At every step,

I hesitate.

I wouldn’t want to ruin

anyone’s holiday picture;

“Who’s that in the background?”

It would be a minor shame.

I am not exactly a festive scene.

Artist ?

He started something unworthy and his conscience did revolt
He continued for fun, telling himself, “To confess I’ll write a ‘post’.

I’ll put some strange character in, one with a ludicrous name,
His descriptions very unlike mine, of a very different fame.

He’ll do the sin for me there, and invite furious curses;
While I’ll still digest applause, he will for me take the blame”

How that’ll free him of his guilt, the blogger never stopped to think
How it qualifies as a ‘confession’ has a rationale rather lame.

It is surely more unworthy, sinful, than what it’s meant to cover
The ruthless abuse of the non-living, of a character mute, helpless, tame.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession. – Albert Camus

Triveni

I

I seated myself, late to work, in the cab
One rascal trickled down my cheek
The driver noticed


II

آج آباد شہر غور رہا تھا مجھکو
کوئی اتلاف نہ ہونے کی کسم مانگ رہا
مہینے خود کو پاکد کے رکھا تھا
Aaj aabaad shahar ghoor raha tha mujhko;
Koi itlaaf na hone ki kasam maang raha;
Maine khud ko pakad ke rakha tha.
III

यह ह्रदय है वास्तव में बुलबुल जल का
इसके भी व्याकुल अंतर का स्पर्श नहीं संभव
पर इसको खंडित, आज्ञा है, कर लो निःसंकोच
Yah hriday hai vaastav mein bulbula jal ka:
iske bhi vyakul antar ka sparsh nahi sambhav.
Par isko khandit, aagya hai, kar lo nihsankoch.

Absentia

I sometimes write a rhyme with pen on paper,
then type it on this phone that you claim yours.
I stare at "SEND" in haze and feel zest vapour,
thinking that these lines don't have the force
that is possessed by my unmoving, almost absent-minded gaze
out of the window, seeking your face in skyscrapery maze.

Praying

You start talking to me in a lilting voice
And I feel as if to God I'm praying.
In the mid of the sentence you take a pause
And I feel as if to God I'm praying.

I feel as if to God I'm praying,
And if that is not too much,
The truth is when to God I'm praying
I feel nothing as such.

Rust

Once I filled this place with random
bits of my head that managed to
generate unexpected fandom
which left its mark and I withdrew

so as to see what they would add
to all of it that I had as a lad
begun with a view to pass my time
and pall my bent to put in rhyme

what I saw up, down and around,
but being away confirmed to me
that once you fade they shall flee,
so strain not ears, there is no sound,

and look no further, neither back,
for you live, still, in a rusting rack,
of a bookshelf unread and remote,
in a half sinking half floating boat.

On Questions

My path rendered itself to me obliquely :
Collisions in the dark ever guided my way,
I was always blinded by the Sun in the day.
Conventional wisdom, I was better to flee.

But my intellect’s been inutile of late,
Can’t persist with questions, crucial and hard
Of career and commerce, of science and art
It just can’t bring itself to contemplate.

It can’t give these, importance more
Than the one that’s etched in the heart
In contrast to which these, from the start,
Are found secondary, bland and bore

This question, which now colours my ink,
Which I carry between all my pages,
Which I carry to all saints and sages :
“Do you sometimes, of me, still think ?”

You

You are the creases on my Forehead, You are the pouches under my eyes, You are the grey in my hair.
You are the Strength in my dare.

You are the vulnerability in my Strength, You are the screech in my speech, You are the crack in my screams.
You are the House of my dreams.

You are the ghost in my House, You are the thorn in my garden, You are the shark of my ocean.
You are the Birth of my emotion.

You are pain of my Birth, You are the helplessness of my infancy, You are the angst of my adolescence.
You are the Fire in my insolence.

You are the scorch of my Fire, You are the stagnation of my water, You are the disease in my air.
You are the Please in my prayer.

You stole the ease from my Please, You stole the art from my heart, You brought the rife in my strife.
You are the Life of my life.

Perspectives, on Valentine's

1
The roads nubile blush with roses red, yellow and pink;
They all today lead to galas, and at gaping pavements wink
That Love, the solemn fogey, may be your ally of ages,
But today's hero, its cousin, isn't agreeable at your wages.


2
A romantic remonstrance of made-up complaints,
A prince peps a florid trance, and a princess faints
A scene ; some public display, which curiously
Froths fervour, makes men, love furiously.


3
Eyes toiling out of the windows of old feral buses
Withdrawing themselves slowly back, as it rushes,
They turn down passively to the lying peanut peels,
Then stick out one last time, adsorbing how it feels.

Small Talk

Not so much plagues the absence of her voice dipped in sucrose,
Nor does not hearing words of praise when he sits writing prose,
No, not even the fact, that there were not to be any more dates,
But that he had no topics now when chattering with his mates.

Childish Whims

Written on 2nd November 2008 at around 8 PM; then titled 'One of These Days'.

One of these days, I’ll bring life to fables
One of these days, I will turn the tables
One of these days ..

One of these days, I’ll ring a surprise
One of these days, I will see sun rise
One of these days ..

One of these days, I won’t remain raw
One of these days, the world will awe
One of these days ..

One of these days, I’ll break the shackles
One of these days, I’ll bring miracles
One of these days ..

Oh God! Pardon me, I refuse your order
To let go of those lands on which I border,

To take these bad days as my longer fate,
I just refuse to accept it won’t be my date.

I hope you’ll excuse me for having my ways,
I will be a little stubborn one of these days.

Making of a Joker

‘If you can laugh at it, you can live with it’: the realisation to which he awoke;
He has been cracking fantastic ones, ever since his life's been made a bad joke.

End of a Joker

He was the Joker of the class, his desk surrounded, even swarmed.
He has forgotten how to laugh, and always wonders who he harmed.

The Stoic

When unaccompanied, no one is a stoic, these eyes betray the most heroic.
I am but just a novice who refutes, what chance have I before long solitudes.

Curse

Don't rely on your bats to do all the talking,
oh dear fan-boys of Sachin Tendulkar.
For all your genius and elegance of kings,
a flawed bat alone can make you a sulker.

Friendship

I'd love to be a somewhat closer friend,
to you, I slyly want to pour my heart out.
But would you me, some patience lend,
until I fight the urgent hard drought ?

The Applicant

We the patients of fatal diseases,
our days counted in countings,
live on the border, by doc's short leases,
love real borders that others find daunting.

That war's much better despite its dangers,
than this meaningless war within,
that one unites us with a billion strangers,
this one distances us from our closest kins.

Plus, don't only those soldiers march on forward,
who really have nothing to lose ?
We fit the bill; please, we are not cowards,
let our suppressed fury cut loose.

The Angry Gaze

Angrily, when I slowly gazed upwards in the darkness,
The big Stubborn Sky stared back with scary starkness

A switch, it seemed, turned on in less than an instant
Which enabled automation of the very very distant

The Sky even though decides to keep the remote-control
He does relent to take me along on this wondrous stroll

Those lovely little Stars abundant in the Space,
Swiftly move to make the contours of your innocent face

The craggy Crow - cute Cuckoo meetings,
Replay each and every one of your greetings

What memory did delete, memory also made replete
I profusely thank the Sky that it's like no other treat

It was truly a most delightful, even magnetic, sojourn
Probably the stuff, out of which legends are born

But, the little one knows about a thing, the better one thinks of it
The thorns on the red carpet reveal themselves bit by bit

I was shown the skyscraper that stood tall; also stood alone,
And struck a chord somehow with my own flesh & bone

It's avoided carefully even by the adventurer on the parachute
The building of stone isn't stone enough, it struggles to remain mute

It's uninhabited perhaps and desperate, even tenants would do
Not its expensive tiles and furnishings, no gimmicks could woo

It's lonely at this altitude perhaps, the building muses
And every now and then, it wished the height reduces

I rethink whether I was stared back in a Response by the Sky
Maybe he was staring down already - fed up of the splendour, on the sly

Hallucinations

Sauntering through metro-stations
I have these strange hallucinations

That one discerning pair of eyes
With intentions though free of vice

Follows every movement of mine
From how I spit to how I dine

But since I also harbour inklings
That every damn appraisal brings

More bad than good to the fore
I fear culpability all the more

Although these fears I often hide
Miss Nonchalance ever by my side

With twilight they come out of hiding
And until dawn are with me, fighting

And end up victors more than often
No folded hands can make them soften

Mornings spent trying to start anew
Watching the birds, feeling the dew

Just when the fears I am done forgetting
Are re-sown their seeds - those eyes, riveting

friendship harvest

Wrote this when I was 14, for a little competition at school:

If in whom you invest,

Your time and passion,

To harbour a bond.

In whom you confide,

Of whom you're so fond.

He turns a blind eye,

As if your woes are just a lie.

And turns a deaf ear,

When you most want him to bear.

Bear with your boring qualms,

Bear with your sorrow.

And he yawns, bored,

And wryly says "tomorrow"

You pass it all okay, but alone,

And good times do come back.

With good times back he comes again,

To say 'we're still jill & jack'.

How can he be so cool again,

How do you hide the remorse,

When your heart isn't a fine jelly,

But has doubts, thick and coarse.

If it was just all about,

Having a good time and some fun,

Wouldn't you rather open the fridge

And bite into harvest-gold-ka-bun.

p.s. : Its so yummy tasty, the bun.

And yes, this one is a poem.

WB Yeats ka naaati.