Empty epiphanies

Suddenly, as if it were a giant bird eye temporarily gauzed by a nictating membrane, the sun's searching ardour dims and the light turns soft, still retaining the yellow warmth that shows the grass all around me as a precious wilderness -- of subdued golden hues, the stems heavy with ripening seeds, nodding to each other or tangled together with a nonchalance that only grass growing wild can know -- of tones and shadows that belong in a painting, like scapes born from soft brush strokes.

I am large, I have multitudes.

I have walked something like 3-4 kilometres (over the dusty roads of my colony and then, Cross-country across as-of-now empty plots) to get to where the grass starts, and then maybe another...circumventing clumps of Lantana, walking doglegs around thorn trees, muscling my way through -- with the lens held high over my head -- where a barely seen trail is overgrown with wild basil and other brush, shoulder high, like a stockade.

My footfalls aren't as light as I would like them to be. Juvenile baya weaver birds out on feeding sorties gather together and watch me pass; prinias and zitting cisticolas clamber up to vantage points and keep me in sight, repeatedly darting glances at me and as repeatedly looking away; a long-tailed shrike imagines I am some bird of prey out to steal its kill and gobbles down a fat grasshopper with unseemly haste; grey francolins burst into flight, in a heart-stopping explosion of wings, one after the other.

But then, I have been here before, and because the grey francolins keep outsmarting me, I can say I have known these defeats before...

I walk some more through grass that's a mid-thigh high, skirting a patch of nettles, all that is there -- this year when the rains failed -- of a seasonal puddle where I have seen munias feed in many, very hundreds.

I am here for the Booted Eagle. And I know (in the way a Birdman knows), I am on time; but no bird takes off into the skies out of the broken treeline in front of me, even as I wait -- shifting my weight from leg to leg, in turns standing tiptoe and rocking back on the balls of my feet to relax the muscles there -- what seems like an eternity or an hour.

As oft before, my thoughts stray and I wonder again, if this is the pinnacle of my existence, that I can be footloose and fancy free to indulge in the pursuit of birds; or my nadir in monetary and career (aren't they the same thing?) terms -- that I, an articulate, educated and experienced professional while my way away thus, in a lonely wait, for a bird that doesn't come.

Then, peripheral to the gaze of my mind,out of the side of my right eye, I see movement.

Its the grass, I see. Its moving. A breeze has sprung and even as I watch, in wave after wave, the whole meadow dances in unison as if each stem and blade of grass has picked up some tune that stays unheard by me.

That's all the answer I will ever get from a meadow of wild grass -- I chuckle to myself; as I turn around, to walk some more kilometres, and search for some more birds.

In Time

Where do the days go?
Do they know the anguish,
the incompleteness of being.
Can they slow, as another year ends?

Then I see, how can it be
or does it matter, really
for some of us will lie and find love,
some will succeed to gather wealth

And some will be spent, searching
for newer ways and measures
to tell of simpler struggles
of the in-drawn hiss, the muted scream

At yet another night's
touch of tincture iodine
on a self raw with
the sutures of loneliness.

September 2012

As the days dry out, 

birdless, I remember the sight 

of your closed eyes,

your repose as you slept,

a dream I dared not wake.

Now I curse my cowardice

and the past, now distant beyond a bird's flight. 

Two years away, the wells of your eyes 

are depths I can't sound 

with my deaf gaze.

I should have

awakened you, after I had awakened to

the poems fluttering under your eyelids.

As the days dry out,

birdless, I regret

Your love, your lies, fool me...

and the skin crawl of your memory 

still writing poems such as these

Vinayaka Chavithi, 2014

As I type this, sitting in the penthouse (rather -- my bare, uncluttered, minimalist writing shack) on the terrace, the sun is peeking out and shining in a haze through the clouds.

The terrace itself is still wet with the last of the rain that has fallen, mostly in a steady trickle, sometimes in a din...for almost a day now -- starting as it did yesterday evening when Naana and I got Vinayaka home, along with the fruits, flowers and other offerings that he relishes.

All in all, thanks to the clouds and the rain, it has been a perfect Ganeshotsav at home for me.

What with the overcast skies almost the exactly same colour as the three lines on my brow (and arms) it seemed as if the heavens were also wearing Tripundra, the mark of Shiva -- in obeisance to his son, Guru Ganesha.  

To fit the sanctity of the occasion, I wore a Panchi and Tripundra and as Amma recited the Mantras that I couldn't hear, I could still concentrate on the Puja apart from a thought occasionally straying away -- like an unfettered bird; where would I have been today if I was in Delhi?

Would I have managed to make it to the Garhwal Himalayas (or Bharatpur) over the weekend? Or someplace closer by -- like Basai or Yamuna Biodiversity Park?

After all, technically (at least for all those who are securely and gainfully employed) this is yet another long weekend.

But then, I realize that I am not in Delhi any more.

My thoughts stray again...is it equally cloudy (and raining) at Vizag now? If I was there at Vizag now -- probably on Thotlakonda or Pavuralakonda, would the light conditions have permitted me to shoot landscapes worthy of catching Ansel Adams eye?

But then, I realize that I am not at Vizag either, that the trip I was to set out on was canceled...

As some poet said, the best laid plans of men and mice (and, the best intentions too) sometimes come to just nought...

Maybe such is life, maybe I am destined to be home and circumabulate the Buffalo Wallow (the Great Cormorants are now in breeding plumage, and the Pied Kingfishers are pairing up, looking for sites to build nests; there are also a flock of Streaked Weavers now more or less established in the reeds that flank the wallow).

Whatever Guru Ganesha wishes. Om Ganeshaya Namaha.

P.S. -- Blame it on the intense pleasure of being at home on Vinayaka Chavithi or the magical atmosphere today -- I did something that I have rarely done after my growing up (in Orissa) years. Left my pens at Guru Ganesha's feet for his blessings. And yes, seeing how I rarely write with them any more, seeing how a lens that is as long as a baby elephant's trunk is now my stock "tool of trade", I naturally asked him to bless it too.

Om Namaha Shivaya :-)            

An old woman begging in a train

Her footwear were oversize 
for her old and shrunken feet.

Her Sari looked like its silk;
her hair was a confusion 

Of odds and ends, with the dull sheen
of old silver. Also enough black

Drawn back in a decrepit bun
a little above her nape. Almost like

Another eye. In the crook
of one scrawny, twig-thin hand

She carried a faded yellow cloth bag.
What's in there? A blanket?

Two more Saris? Her remaining years?
Into the wizened palm of the other hand

I pressed down some money,
after touching it to my eyes.

Those eyes are wet now
As I cry this poem on

The tragedy that is
an old woman begging in a train.