Downpour

Streaking raindrops batter my bare body

With utter urgency, soaking every inch of me

Silently I stand in some kind of trance

My being dissolving in the cosmic dance.

Mystic Land

India, the ancient mystic mother of the east

has birthed and sustained myriad mysteries:

Every possible human thought stream

sages who deciphered the nature of reality –

Charvaka, Advaita, Buddha and sutras,

Ayurveda, Siddha and Kama sutra,

sensuality and spirituality side by side,

imagination stretching puranas that delight,

a hundred different flapping tongues ,

frolicking intricate ragas and graceful blending mudras

gut-rocking folk music and dances,

grains galore, spices special and strange fruits,

exquisite cuisines and a melange of cultural traditions,

rain forests, shrill shrubs, towering pines and fertile land

snow mountains, curling rivers, vast plains and arid land,

assimilating cultures and beliefs of other lands

influencing every other cultures’ thought-strands.

Diversity and plurality – the essence of our motherland

celebrate and preserve we must with genuine patriotism,  

unshackle we must parochial thoughts and nationalism

fetters of inequality, injustice and superstitions.

An Invocation to Darkness

Hello Darkness, my ancient friend

spread your coal coat end to end

permeate every corner, nook and cranny

destroy every sparkle of light and faculty

annihilate every form and every shape

erase every boundary and every scape

Let your torch of darkness burn and churn

Black in all its varied formless turns.

Only then will

fair cream company businesses lapse

wayward degenerate critical faculties innate

to differentiate and discriminate collapse

every comparison of good-bad, failure-success fade

maiming in the name of race, colour and caste halt

claiming some land as our bounty stop

quoting dead scriptures and tradition

with moribund swollen pride cease

debilitate imposing militant morals with zeal

or imploring god’s name with conceited glee

in whose names wars have been fought

pogroms propagated, heads hacked or lives lynched.

Hence Darkness, my constant old friend

shine black bright with all your might

So we can

lose our discriminative chatter

drop all our pretensions and truly be

so we can truly stand stark naked

so every sound is a newly born’s first cry

every touch is as fresh as dew drops

every smell intoxicating every nerve and cell

every presence a seamless extension.

so we can be

alive

throbbing.

So fuck off filthy light

stop those demented deeds done

in your name to sully its

and let Darkness reign supreme.

ESSE

Life is always around hazy corners 
or in withering labyrinths of the past
never ever in the fleeting bubble of ‘now’.

For ‘now’ threatens ‘me’ to the fringes –
my automated thoughts, my gluey addictions, 
my smoggy emotions and my blinkered views.

Twisted Humanity

A spade scoop of mud, a twisted swollen hand

reveals – of man or woman who knows

another scoop and another tender hand

appears – a child’s perhaps?

Patches of white where putrid flesh crumbs

had stripped off into the erasing earth.

Spades hesitating a moment to reveal more

outstretched hands of soul-bodies buried

reaching out for that last whiff of life

shortened with a slash, a cortex shatter

or bloody bursts puncturing vital body parts

by smithereens of screeching metal death darts.

Innocent victims of beliefs

in warped ideas of twisted minds.

The nauseating stink of inhumanity lingers on.

My Childhood Mountain

Every time I pass by it on the train

my childhood mountain remains unchanged.

I had conquered nimble footed those hills

prancing along merry paths made by rills.

Now weak-kneed, I can barely descend

though its sight makes my soul ascend.

Its holds in its womb a fecund valley

countless creatures, lush green paddy

pepper scrambling up towering trees

jackfruit and fruit trees growing with ease.

With equal greedy ease it’s plundered

Yet all is gracefully, generously rendered.

My childhood mountain gently mocks

my aging haggard body laid waste

by greedy tastes and corporate haste.

Every time up and down my hill I climb

it slows my pace, makes me sublime

and glues me to solid ground.

Rogue Web

A faint blip in the cosmic web,

marked its birth and its ebb.

Weaving a fine elementary first mesh

it began in the web of life its life rush

to explore, play and trap prey thoughts.

Bigger it grew, intricate and thicker

dual threads of good, bad, it and other.

Then as it spewed, threads of dark desire grew,

widening its move, reach, play and slew

weaving ceaselessly self-obsessed sheaths.

With a swift coup the web went rogue

snaring its source in a universe vague

crafting a web of illusions as in dreams

entwined in a maze of thought-seams

brittle strands of a secure sand castle.