Poetry with Prakriti Poetry Contest

For all you need to know about the contest, go here

Last date for sending in entries (one poem per participant) is 15th December.

The prizes are good (three cash prizes of Rs.10000/-, Rs.7500/- and Rs.5000/- each) and it's an open competition, which means anyone can participate.

So, hurry :-)

Here's more about the actual Poetry with Prakriti Contest, that's quite an event list indeed, no?

Far from the madding crowd

Far from the madding crowd?

Oh yes.

Far from the effed up city traffic?

Oh yes, very much yes.

Just around 10 days back, I finally took a call and got the barrel
and piston on the Bullet replaced. I have been a bit around this
country on that barrel and piston and done close to 90k kms on it.
But still, technically speaking it shouldn't have
failed / ceased / seized. My current mechanic is soft-spoken,
highly skilled and very very wise (he's touching 60) and
according to him the piston overheated and failed. Incredulously,
not because I was racing at 130 kmph on the highway,
throttle locked and hunched like a jockey on my iron horse.
But because, I had negotiated a 55 minutes long
crawl -- Basheerbagh -> Liberty -> Tank Bund -> Sindhi
Colony -> Paradise X Roads -> Vikrampuri (where the engine
conked out), largely in 1st and 2nd gear on yet another
forgettable evening when the city's traffic was well and
truly fucked.

In other words, I got trafucked.

Is that a word (yet)? I don't know, but I am sure
Hyderabad's traffic won't get better, rains or no rains.
There are just too many people and too many cars to give
the city's roads any chance to be orderly.

So the thirst to be far from the madding crowd...

Another reason is that I am now running in the aforementioned,
"new" barrel and piston, a task that is not exactly easy,
requiring as it does inordinate patience, a nose (literally)
for the smell of over-heating, a total disregard for the passage
of time and so on and so forth...

Whatever some of my other biker / rider friends may say,
somehow the idea of running-in the city doesn't make sense
to me, after all I don't want to get trafucked again...

So I have been riding around on the highways and man, oh man,
have I been tripping or what?

Two of my status messages (from Facebook) to illustrate
what's on my mind while on the road


Then – a single lane, sunlit
dapple ground for mango, banyan and neem.
Now – a wide carriageway, to hurtle or airstrip,
in antiseptic speed. With a median that's a country
road – of grasses nodding sagely,
riding breezes and slipstreams. What remains
of that sunlit dapple ground – like a single leg
of worn blue denim, still catches sight.
Here light puddles bright,
as golden shelled maize, tanned brown paddy.


(This was after an approximately 250 kms -- to and
fro -- ride on NH 7, one of my familiar haunts for
most of my riding days in the Deccan)


The roads belong to no one,
but S.H.1 remains mine –
blessedly alive
as a beating vein on the back
of my right hand
– like my throttle wrist.
For 78 kms under a mellow November sun.
To a bit before Siddipet (and back).
Through a rain-soaked Deccan bursting
with colours – yellow-flowering gram,
“oh-so-white” cotton, wildflowers
I know not the name of and
the good, green earth.


(This was after a traipse on the road that leads
to Shamirpet Lake and a lot beyond, again a familiar
haunt for as long as I have been riding
in the Deccan)

There's a lot more of running in left and to make things more
time-consuming I also finally bought a Nikon D-90 (an impulsive
purchase using the only credit card I have) so I am hoping I will
traipse around some more and compose something poetic with my eye.

Somewhere far from the madding crowd.

When a frog in a puddle dies

I am lucky in that, I live pretty close to wide open spaces and
what can be justifiably called "wilds". Barely two kilometres
from my gate, I can get lost in a charmed expanse comprising of
disused and abandoned quarries, vineyards, orchards and mixed
farms and acres of trees and grasses growing wild.

This is where I cycle as much as I can, sometimes for a reason,
mostly for none. These expanses are the setting for a number
of poems in Moving On, and one that deals with my cynical take
on the false hopes regarding the monsoons last year -- Unslept.

So it passed that this year too I was cycling in the same wilds
when the monsoons arrived over the Deccan. Many would say a sure
sign that the Monsoons are here for good is when you see peacocks
dancing. In my case, I have seen more peacocks (and peahens) than I
could count this year, but queerly enough that is really is the
Monsoons, the original item, not some false alarm was kind of was
communicated to me by a slightly dopey (or highly sated)
looking frog, sometime in late June.

It must have been five or six days into the Monsoons, and I was
on the dirt track (that winds through the charmed expanse mentioned
above) for the second time. This dirt track is incidentally wide
enough for a truck to pass and I see a healthy puddle forming on
it where it passes through a thickly wooded section. And I see
Mr. Froggie too, fat and glassy eyed. I was totally at a loss
to decipher that look; I have seen really, really thirsty people
look like that after a very welcome round of beers. I guess
in Mr.Froggie's case it was a bit more than just beers -- maybe
he was enjoying the orgasmic bliss of a private spa pool or he
was dreaming of being kissed by a princess....

So that was June. From then till end of November -- till around
a week back, to be exact -- I haven't seen Mr. Froggie or bothered
much about the puddle, but crossed it again and again and seen
it bigger and deeper than it ever was last year.

Meanwhile, 5 months passed.

In these five months, I got wet more times than I can remember,
fell sick three times (a record of sorts for me) and even as I
write this, am recovering from a very severe and debilitating fever.

In these five months, I have once again realized that the
monsoons have a magically regenerative touch (and intoxicate
frogs and human beings alike) and there is no nook or cranny
of even a concrete city that the rains cannot reach. Its a
bit overwhelming to see the tops of dead and boringly staid
walls grow green with moss, and to see a profusion of butterflies
and bees, millions and millions of them, the former coming when
the monsoons are at their peak, the latter when the waters
start "standing". Its overwhelming to ride on Tank Bund and
see streamers of butterflies flutter-flying aimlessly, blithe
and unconcerned, flowers in flight. Its fun being on the Bullet
on the highways seeing a dragonfly headed for your face and
managing to dodge it at the last minute.

It's believed that the rains slacken after Ganesh Chaturthi.
But that didn't happen this time around. It's also believed
that September 30th is officially the last day of the Monsoons.
This year, I was soaked to the underwear on September 30th in
riding home through a shortcut through the bastis that flank
Hasmathpet Lake, but the same happened a week after.

Nobody (not the least, me) minds the rains, but
5 months of it is freakish, no?

But then, last Tuesday I got a sign that the Monsoons
are done and finished.

And it had to do with a sighting of Mr. Froggie.

I am on the cycle (you know where, don't you?) and I come
across THE puddle. Or rather, I come across a very well muscled
and (really swift) seven footer of a snake, ( flecked with gravel
red) shouldering its way into the grasses besides the dirt track.
With Mr. Froggie in its jaws. Its over before I can brake the
cycle and I see that the puddle is no more than 2 inches of water
and mostly wet gravel sludge.

That was one very big and fat looking snake too, evidently
intent on feeding full and hibernating.

And snakes hibernate in the winters, don't they?

Which means as of last Tuesday, the monsoons have ended and
its winter here now :-)

That ends a really bountiful monsoon, one that has left the
quarries full of water and a profusion of life still sprouting
from the rain-soaked Deccan.

RIP, Mr. Froggie!