Denial and Elation

Each of my days is a process of gentle prolonging
Of saving love in a large honey jar
And waiting for the brim

"Your eyes close with my dreams"

Sometimes I become you without even knowing, 
When you were desperately turning pages in the middle of the night,
while still thinking about committing suicide
because without me, you felt your life had ended.

Sometimes I become you without even knowing,
When you sit opposite me and write and write and write,
Without ever raising your eyes to look at me.
And I feel glad that you didn't kill yourself that night!

A sense of disproportion

"His name was Ulioperistybier and he had metallic wires coming out of his skull, black and thin like well-oiled hair. Sometimes when he thought hard, his wires would sway a little giving the impression of ripples in a paddy field."

And that story would go through a needle and come out of a haystack and yet all of it would sound real as Soumojit Mistry would tell it to the young wards with so much eyebrow-dancing, chest-thumping and ocassional jumping over tables with various guttural sounds that it created a dreamy verisimilitude.

He was an accountant in a glass factory and retired sometime back. Now he just comes to our school and tells his stories. Allow me some imagination and I would say he looked like an amused turtle sticking his head out of a shell or more like a bald baby in a cradle fascinated by the jhumka hanging overhead.

'Dada, what silly stories you tell these children? Why don't you tell them something useful like freedom fighters, or Ashoka or something?'

The science teacher clearly didn't appreciate what Soumojit Mistry was doing. In fact she was worried at times over some of the things Soumojit Mistry had said in the class: 'You see, you throw an electron at the wall like a cricket ball and wait for it to rebound so that you can catch it'. Even some parents had started flocking me to express concerns about this old man telling stories.

Once we were watching the children play. Soumojit mistry pointed at a boy and said: 'You see that thin boy, if he runs any more, he would vanish into thin air'. The boy's parents moved and he went to another school in another city. Soumojit Mistry later said to me: 'See I told you he would vanish'.

I once said to him: 'Dada, you are so young!'. I wouldn't imagine an old man getting excited about a new day, every time the same sun rose in the same east! It seemed there was no worries or end to anything. Soumojit Mistry died some days later. Natural aging. I had really hoped for a more dramatic climax to the story of the man behind these many stories.

I couldn't help remembering the story I once read when I was a boy. A man in China didn't want people to weep at his funeral. So he hid lots of crackers under his garment before dying. And when the villagers set his body afire, rockets vroom-ed out to the sky and exploded and the children started laughing in joy!

-Untitled-

It isn't about fertilizers or seeds or bees,
But I can't tend to the few ailing plants 
    and shrubs in your otherwise splendid garden.
I hope you understand and I can't explain if you don't:
I can't be your gardener.

Glasses break into
Glasses break into Glasses break into
Glasses break into Glasses break into Glasses break into
Glasses break into Glasses break into Glasses break into Glasses break into
Glasses...

Abilities

May be I am a not a bird but a meerkat,
so what -
I will still run from ridge to ridge
To try and see farther than anyone else.

How it all began?

Few words sprinkled first
On an unadorned blank page
Like fickle feet of new lovers
On empty suburban streets

Remember those Panchatantra stories you read me?

Every December Olive Ridleys amass in arribadas on shores of Gahirmatha.
(Your skin is getting wrinklier, smiles toothless. You look funny
with your carapace popping as you stoop as if on a Zimmer frame.)

Every year these sea turtles die in transit being hit by fishing trawlers.
(I want you to hold my hand as we cross the road.
And please don't get groceries or anything by yourself.)

IUCN categories Olive Ridleys as vulnerable species about to get endangered.
Footage of hatched baby turtles scuttling towards the sea.
And a few motherless poor things become canine feast.
(I am scared. Please don't leave me alone.)

(Appeared on Kritya)

Stuck

There is a dark alley that leads nowhere,
And I don't know why I keep revisiting it.

Sometimes I envy the migratory birds.
Someday I will jump off a bridge
To prove that I can fly.

I think you will love me a little more that day.

(Appeared on Kritya)

Our Grandfather. Clock.

What remains of a shrunken body
Is an abandoned pendulum in a middle of a night
Going tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock
In you your fond armchair;
Hanging upside down in hope of turning time
Backwards.

Across years, somewhere
A baby
Rocking in a makeshift hammock cradle
Of its mother's cotton sari
Slept comfortably, oblivious
Of a written obituary.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock -
Perpetuation in its laborious progress
Like the wheels of a train speeding
And a young man seated within got impatient
To arrive at a destination, irrelevant.
How did you learn to wait placidly for autumn leaves to -?

(Appeared on Kritya)

Ignorance. Bliss.

Ashes fell from a burning cigar
And we stood on either side
Of a stranger holding it.
Smoke rises, doesn't fall.
People fall in love to realize
Who has time for maintaining lawns
Or relationships?
Sunglasses are a wonderful invention.
And so are Blackberries and vanity bags.

(Appeared on Kritya.)

The New Wall

In the depths of mind’s ocean
An alien particle pricked
Like a microscopic irritant.

A poet chose to shut himself
For shelled life is to create pearls,
Isn’t it?

Then a window would be an innovation
When the whole mind could be free
For how else
Can a roof be without walls?

(This poem appeared on Kritya).

Split. Personality.

There
Are those
Who talk in bursts
Like dominoes toppling other dominoes unintentionally
Or like - like kittens curious about a potted cactus plant;
Pauses are like
An avalanche that forgets and remembers it's way.
And in their world it could happen -
For rivers still have the time to meander
And cows still have the time to graze.
The world is endless but a slow wagon isn't a waste,
For a journey is more about uncovering
Than covering distances.
And there are those
Of concise words,
Who know when
to pick a needle
over a knife.

(This poem appeared on Crack the Spine Issue Eleven.)

Infatuation.Brief.

Its all tranquil
Like the surface of water
And all the way down till your chin
Where as if perturbed by a pebble
Is a dimple
Cute,
And thoughtful.

(The poem appeared on Crack on the Spine Issue Eleven)