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. 

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.