Death in 2030

A lone cocoon clasps desperately

a semi-wilted drooping branch

of a half-dead wobbly tree

in a vast moribund field

of burnt grass and straggling plants.

The cocoon quakes and cracks.

The probing feelers a blast of acrid air greets.

Its body convulses with indecision:

discard it cosy cocoon, its secure womb?

The pungent air rebukes its birth,

the frying sun, its genesis.

It flaps its pall disfigured wings

with its deformed proboscis to probe

faint nectar scent, first droplets of elixir

from emaciated flowers in the scarred field

tainted by noxious dumps,

treacherous flesh-spitting mines

and dregs of death-belching bombs

- residues of human progress.

A few feeble flaps drain its life sap.

It topples down to the ground

from where it sprung.

Its wings open and close in last gasps

of poisoning, smothering, oxygen-deprived air.

A final tremor of life runs.

Silence follows.

Star Gazing

A power grid collapse can

tumble your surreally  lit world.

It’s then the hazy night casts

its coal coat over the earth

obliterating differences, neutralizing

everything in the light of darkness

except the distant starry ember topping.

Then when you peer into

the incomprehensible boundless void

of the countless star-studded heavens

realization jolts your entire being

of how false-safely ensconced you are

in your caged self,  your skin-wrapped universe,

with your space as large-little as your head

and how sagacious and big-headed

you pretend to be.

Then when you gaze long and steady

at those bone shaking starry void of heaven

Realization dawns

on the futility of expressing being

with mindless action of regressive progress;

on the wisdom of being  rooted in being,

wherein effortless becoming flows,

time dilates to the now of being from which you act.

Realization makes you

break into laughter

expand your being in inclusion

to throb in unison with the universe.

The stars will jolt you

and the heavens shatter you

on a night the power grid breaks.

I You He

I’m a blue-eyed blonde

you are brown and he’s

black, you say

So what, I say

Scratch the micron skin

dig a little deep

we are all the same beneath:

tissues, marrow, blood and bones

a heart that beats and

a stomach that churns

you and he and I

in sorrow, grieve

in sadness, pine

in anger, roar

in joy, float

in jealousy, twist and turn.

So how are we different?

Did you say we are culturally different?

Beliefs, customs and art are not the same, I admit

but how does your colour argument fit?

A monotone one-cultured world

nature and nurture never unfolds.

Stop! Not again “this land is ours”!

Probe your history

‘whose land’ becomes a mystery.

Go up in space and look down

borders and boundaries blur

illusions of mind break down.

So drop your pretensions

wake up from your delusions and

walk naked my friend!

Aged Beauty

Stooped she stands, a stick in hand

A gnarled tree, twisted and battered.

Her wrinkled face and shriveled arms

Like cracked barks of trees in farms

Mask tales of voluptuous flowery youth

And brisk fruitful womanhood

Of fleeting springs, ripe summers

Pleasant falls and bitter winters.

She sits with sunken eyes

Staring at vacant life, cold as ice

Her slipping thoughts are ropes to cling

To memorable things no more to sing.

The bulging veins on her neck and hands

Once gushed with vigour lush

And crafted life in the womb

Now congealed and cold.

Slow and unsteady steps she takes

On tottering legs that miled a million miles

Bones stretching feeble skin.

A clock whose wheels have clogged

Sinking into dust from whence she sprung

To rise again morphed and renewed.

Stooped, wrinkled, shriveled, unwanted

She stands, a lonely wilted beauty.

On a Chennai Suburban Train

During summer vacation in August 2011, I was travelling in a suburban train in Chennai when I witnessed this scene. I have seen such scenes earlier. But this time it touched me and I thought I should put it down in a poem. It took me almost a year to do the task due to paucity of time.

Also the passengers travelling in a suburban train have changed a lot over the years. I felt a stranger in the train. Not many from lower middle class were travelling in a suburban train anymore. It was more of the working class. The middle class traveled in cars or bikes or private vans. Whenever I traveled alone, I continued travelling on trains and buses. This was the form of transport I used when I was young.

On a Chennai Suburban Train

The sudden violent clatter of a drum chokes

The cluttering rhythm of the suburban train coach

Cutting into passengers loud and lousy chatter

Slicing the muted monologues of monotonous matter

And drowning the whining whirl of fans overhead.

A drum beating frail sareed woman

And a pony-tailed girl of six or seven

With ruddy lips, cherry plump, well-fed,

Polished nails and toes, silken dressed

And made up face, take centre stage.

She sings and dances to a popular Tamil number

Muffled by the beating drum and the train’s clatter

Then some flips and somersaults again and again

Balancing her petite body on the jostling train

Mechanical, vacant like the speeding train.

Her act done, the drum becomes silent, calm

With a bowl in hand, she asks for alms

Most part freely with two rupee coins

Manipulated to charity by naive innocence.

Alms collected, into the exit aisle she retreats.

Both fall silent waiting for another station

For another coach and begin all over again

As she waits, she drifts into a dream to linger

Prying the cracks in the wall with her little finger

A short interlude to dwell in childhood.

Her fate to be a breadwinner child

And miss the sparkle of childhood wild.

Or lucky to miss the fuss, groomed

In the sterile uniformed classroom,

Coerced into adulterated adulthood too soon.

A doused lamp among a million snuffed out lamps

By senile wars, clawing poverty and exploiting vamps.

Her body, doomed, like other lasses, in the womb

To be bartered across counters gloom

Buds nipped, never ever to bloom.

Dusk in the Mountains

This poem was written after an intense experience I had in Munnar during dusk. The sunset was stunningly beautiful. I was transfixed by it. I would sound conceited if I called it a semi-mystical experience. It was something like what Wordsworth, the nature mystic, felt. I felt at one with nature. Unfortunately, I lost the text. What I have written is incomplete after trying hard to wrench out from my memory the words I used. 

... The sun cast its magic

As it set ...

The pale mountains bathe in blood

The clouds freak pink

The speechless air reeks orange

Birds and beasts,

Young and old

Merge selves in red, but drown not

The heavens and the earth

Baptised in blood

Recreated, reborn every pulsing moment

In a passionate union.

In an instant

Dusk slips to darkness

the dark God of unknowing takes over

the unconscious conscious ...

One and yet many

the jugglery of reality

The seamless robe

One the many
One-Many
OM

Dark Night of the Soul

These two poems were written when I was down and out in life for two reasons. I was  depressed   about the real state of my life. Nothing was going very well for me in life.

b)      I was  depressed about the existential state of my life. After my intense search, I had to give up all those many beliefs and conditionings that I held dear to me. So I was nowhere. If you believe in a religion or something else you feel secure. But if you realise the fruitlessness of such beliefs and let them go, you feel damn insecure. You are nowhere. To live in that borderline is depressing. 

Dark Night of the Soul

The evenings burst and fade

The migratory birds silently trace the skies

The nights are comas or demi-hells

The mornings descend too soon

The pungent days drag on

The butterflies flutter a moment

The rainbows startle the heavens

The universe expands beyond reach.

Existence is anaesthetised, drugged

Nights intrude on days and days barge into nights

Evenings merge into mornings

And the morns melt into evenings.

Too many complexities to think clearly

Or to stop thinking

The demon in control

Life loses energy to live

Death plays shadow games

Reality mingles with dreams

The dreamer becomes a dream

Borderlines of vagueness

Semi-conscious myths populate psyche.

Another Dark Night of the Soul (12^th Jan 1997)

Darkness sags heavily

Nothing is certain

The grey mist of confusion

Devours my mind

The vague tunnels

Of the illusory past

Reveal the mistakes I made

At the -crossroads

But where they mistakes

And crossroads at all?

I wish I could slip out

Of this darkness

Like a wisp of light

disappearing into thin air!