Indeterminate

Last year X had his quarter life crisis
This year he is struggling with the midlife.
And you're wrong, genius, that he'd die at four
Because I'm already twenty five.

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.

Psychological Laggards

Dear page, your emptiness and mine
correspond, so I guess we're fine
when we bond. Bond we can't very
easily with others, can we? Merry

making of kids as a cracker burns,
we see, smile at with observant glee,
but we mostly can't partake in turns,
you and me, in that fun, can we?

This world's too fast for us for whom
a quick flutter of a cuckoo's wings
can mean a day's musings, or a room
opened after ages with a broom, brings

pictures of wilderness to mind to stay
for longer than with each other lovers do.
For now distractions galore, people stray,
and it's not even that their love isn't true.

Let's face it that we're from some other age,
that it's natural for us to be alone, or let's lie
to each other that our rage, dear page,
is a matter of mood, is a whim cap-a-pie.

From Yellowing Pages

Closed Clone Cubicles [15th January, 2009]

Four feet by four feet, can forfeit your sanity ;
can make feel like beggars those earlier full of vanity.


For DCE [23rd April, 2009]

Goodness, I am the river just before its coast,
the inexorable destination of most.
Now my bed will be bigger
and waves will spread.
So calm I will trigger
some deadly dread.
It proffers: riches,
sundry bitches.
I will be free,
and not me.

Blah!

Down a whirlpool of wastage the years
kept floating naively, so that when they
finally looked up, they had no peers
looking at them, with whom they may
have played chase and seek, shifted gears,
ran faster, slowed down or just lay
down a furtive corner. With the seers
conspicuously absent, there was no ray
of hope up the whirlpool, so the years
added to themselves one more day
fighting that fulcrum of fierce
finishing, and then one more: to pray,
but like always, they sensed, one hears,
that praying can but just add a day
which, by the time it disappears,
would add another in the same way.
But one day, we know, the heart bears
awareness that this is no way
to live on such that it appears
that I shall not cause you dismay.

Daily Docket

In fifteen minutes, I'll leave for the workplace.

In five, I'll have shut the computer.

In ten, I'll have put my shoes on.

In twelve, I'll have combed my hair.

In twenty, I'll have broken a traffic rule.

In sixty, I'll have had a hopeless thought.

In fact, I've had it already.

In six hours, I'll have received more advice.

In ten, I'll have harmed myself a little more.

In eleven, I'll have cursed myself.

In twelve, I'll have broken another traffic rule.

In fourteen, I'll have gone to bed with unmet goals.

In twenty four, I'll repeat the process.

Sight

Sight.
In my sight a pretty face.
At first tantalizingly small,
it gets bigger in my eyes.
And then it gets still bigger.
So big only it could be seen.
The very next moment
it disappears,
like it never was there.
But, momentarily.
The very next moment,
from next to my same restless eyes,
it whizzes away like a bullet
away from me.
Farther, farther.
Out of bounds,
no matter how much I try.
Now the rear view mirror
has instead of her
a police bike, and
I am fined for overspeeding.

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 My Way

A fragrance permeates my head
when I see this Gulmohur tree,
from under which we boarded bus
and went to school carefree.

The tree was stumps for our cricket
while waiting for the bus to come,
but often without a bat or ball,
under it many a song we’d hum.

My stamp collection, his trump-cards,
her Barbie: our world collective.
Those on-impulse created rival camps,
those next day’s steps corrective.

Those steps succeeded without fail,
till we moved apart in space;
being better now outdid being good,
and we bettered at monstrous pace.

In place of those unreasoned smiles,
we braced an unreasonable scoff;
so much time spent getting better,
and are we really better off ?

In bettering, I got you, my job,
and of my debts to you, the main,
is that by driving to your premises,
I am now passing this tree again.

September Rain

It is the season of harvest,
you the farm looking its best,
and I am raindrops thick,
falling for you, like a prick,
at an inopportune time.

Those days are gone,
when seeds were sown,
And I, entrapped by clouds,
eluded you, stuck in my shrouds,
writing some bogus rhyme.

Lurking almost midway now,
my reluctant weight somehow
acquiesces to the winds’ blowing:
lands on your border knowing
that it must avert this crime.

Hope

I set the parrot free today, the one I'd got for you.
I've been watching its food decay, ever since it flew.
I hope to hear something tonight, from the bird.
It has been very long since you said a word.

Unnamed

You told me politely

To go away

I went

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 ?”

The Stoic

किसी बात का ग़म मुझे अब क्यों नहीं होता
सब रोते हैं जहाँ मैं वहां क्यों नहीं रोता

क्या खून है ये आज भी या बन गया पानी
कितना उबालो इसको, मैं आपा नहीं खोता

मैं झूठ के आंसू तो बहाने को बहा दूँ
इन आंसुओं से दिल कभी हल्का नहीं होता

बड़े युन्ही लड़ते यहाँ बच्चे युन्ही हँसते
सब ऐसा ही रहता यहाँ गर मैं नहीं होता

कोहराम है, इस शहर की अब नींद है हराम
मैं सो गया थक कर जहाँ कोई नहीं सोता

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.

कल और आज

क्या कल सैलाब आया था या मौसम में मोहब्बत थी
कोई मुझको बता दीजे कि कल क्या मेरी हालत थी

मुझे अब याद ना आए, मेरी बद-हवासी का मंज़र
क्या मेरी जुस्तुजू में कोई जुर्रत, कुछ ज़लालत थी

के घंटो से टंगा हूँ फ़ोन की तारों पे मैं लेकिन
सुबह सिर्फ़ घंटियाँ, अब उसकी मम्मी की वकालत थी

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.