S c a t t e r e d ?

That -- the title of this blog post seems to sum up the status and character of the Monsoons this year (and the related fate of India's prosperity at large). To elaborate, the forecast is that the monsoon will be mostly scattered this year. Which means, it may rain cats and dogs (and cloudbursts) over your house while it barely drizzles over mine -- immaterial of our respective houses being located in two different states, cities, colonies or even being cheek by jowl in terms of proximity.

As I write this, there already seem to be "water wars" happening here in AP with the meagre water in Nagarjuna Sagar / Srisailam the proverbial bone of contention. And though AP has received some rains (which here in Hyderabad have as usual revealed the abject state of city's urban planning as if it were covered by a thoroughly wet tee shirt), the situation is really grim and almost drought-like across a large swathe of the country -- the floods in Assam notwithstanding.

The "entire" country is a different kettle of fish and the monsoon is not something that can ever be properly predicted but still why is it so that we -- most of India's metros and towns don't do much about conserving water? That we don't do much about letting it all go and flow -- by and by of course, through one big dam and another -- out into the sea?

Why, oh why, cannot we take a leaf out of the planning and foresight of kings and kingdoms of yore, who -- in days far less scientifically advanced than these had the common sense to get tanks and man-made lakes constructed in an intricate arrangement that ensured that more or less all the bounties of the heavens could be collected?

Why oh why, don't we give our lakes -- at least here in Hyderabad -- a bit more of respect, treat them with the care they deserve as our only reservoir of fresh water?

Is it that we all think, with typical urban consumerist disdain, that we can buy as much of water as we want?

Beggars me, the very idea...what will one buy when there is nothing to buy? 

Liquid food for thought, is it not?                

An Old Woman

An old woman grabs
hold of your sleeve
and tags along.

She wants a fifty paise coin.
She says she will take you
to the horseshoe shrine.

You've seen it already.
She hobbles along anyway
and tightens her grip on your shirt.

She won't let you go.
You know how old women are.
They stick to you like a burr.

You turn around and face her
with an air of finality.
You want to end the farce.

When you hear her say,
'What else can an old woman do
on hills as wretched as these?'

You look right at the sky.
Clear through the bullet holes
she has for her eyes.

And as you look on
the cracks that begin around her eyes
spread beyond her skin.

And the hills crack.
And the temples crack.
And the sky falls

With a plateglass clatter
around the shatter proof crone
who stands alone.

And you are reduced
to so much change
in her hand.


-- Arun Kolatkar   

S c a t t e r e d

Do you remember the velvet mites
their touch a pristine soft, softer than a cherub's kiss
their colour a red
redder than the passion in our lifeblood?

Do you remember how deeply we sighed
at the thought, that they were drops
s c a t t e r e d
harbingers of the coalescing deluges of love?

Again
full of faith, the rains
are here, drenching us child like,
with memories of what could have been

The Coming of The Rains

I have a birdbath up on the terrace's ledge and opposite the door into my "writer's shack".

For most of  the summer past, it stayed bone dry as most of the time there was no water to fill into it. I also had the grief of seeing half a dozen eggplant / brinjal / aubergine (never knew the difference among them) plants drying almost half to death once in two days if I forgot to water them (incidentally with mixes of what my mother would have "thrown" into the kitchen sink and the "soakings" of half a bucket of water in which I had washed my olive green "birding" Tee shirt and the "waste fish water" from the goldfish bowl).

The writer's shack itself did not see much of me or my writing -- for one, it was unbearably hot for most of the summer and for another I was "into" birding in a big way (more about that here soon -- hopefully).

Then again this year we did not have much of the usual pre-monsoon showers; nor did we have the steady build-up (in the form of real rains) which promised the onset of the actual monsoons. Two "natural" ways in which summer's heat is vented.

So, yes it was one crazy, cruel summer indeed; with a lot of gazing up at the skies.

But then came the rains -- after two days of them streaming in, cumulus and like the frosting of a cherub's breath the clouds totally darkened the blues. And then came the rain, starting with an afternoon drizzle -- through which (from the terrace) I spotted two male Asian Koels arguing in a neighbouring tree -- that then turned into one continuous deluge, throughout the night.

That deluge gave me all the water I needed.

To bathe to the depths of my soul.

To wash the floor of the writer's shack with buckets collected from the storm-water pipe.

And -- in a birdbath that also got filled by the rain water, also for washing up all my assorted ink pens.

Balmy
snowmelt cool,
seeps deep
the rain
into
my parched soul.   

That was one unforgettable night too -- one of an extended power cut when I had a number of Pessoan insights, while "writing" into my phone.

Now, for rains of writing, as the pens await bursts and deluges of ink.

A Long Summer Break?

Well not really; though it has been one crazy summer and I haven't been blogging much, things have been more or less the same. And then again -- the killer of most blogs, Facebook takes up a lot of my time these days.

But I will blog again. 

For now the rains are here (they hit Hyderabad around a week back) and among other things they have recharged the borewell at home.

Is it vain, this feeling of being refreshed -- of glorifying in the small joy of surviving yet another summer? That too, yet one more when I was out of doors finding some more poetry?

I wouldn't know and then again, for this instant it is already a summer past.

Let's drink of, in and to the rains.

  

A Song as Summer Ends

 

You wells of implacable sun-blaze
you nibs dipped in life light
I will raise you first
skywards
for that deluge of wetness
that heaven sends
I will raise you first, when it rains
immaterial of my soul's thirst

For now, my eyes, there's more
to see and hear
in the rhythmic dance of mirages on heat melt roads
to gaze hard at clayey cracks, for hark
there's a story in this now parched
mere of water lost. Yes, my eyes
we will take root, to unravel and raconteur
what these dried snags say

Wondrous, we will stay transfixed,
hearing birdsong in silhouettes of avian flight.
For now, my eyes, there's more
to see and hear,

This summer's just a short day
and long's the distance
to that endless night,
when we close.