Treebark

Its only when you have written them,
only when you have consigned them to time
like a four or five letter word uttered artlessly
or a spicule of your spit
that the wind blows away into the night
of the road behind your motorcycle

Its only after putting the distance
of your years in between
that you know, your poems were preoccupations
a vain affair with words, even.
The earth has wrinkled, treebark has aged
while you were outgrowing them.

कोशिश

कुछ अलग है
यह मेरी रोज रोज की रियाज़
कुछ अलग है
इन आखों की फ़ौजी तलाश
शब्दों की सुनी गहराइयों मे
यह अस्तित्व की खोज
कुछ अलग है मेरी हर हार
हर दिन मैं पाता हूँ
एक अकीर्तित जीत,
एक मुट्ठी भर जिंदगी की
कुछ अलग है मेरी मनमानी,
चिड़चिड़ा -- मेरे जुर्म, मेरे साजिश
हक़ीकत से मैं लेता हूँ ब्यान
खोए हुए ख्वाबों की
कुछ अलग हैं मेरे उम्मीदों की शिखरें

कुछ अलग है मेरी कोशिश

(I need to write more often in Hindi. Because every-time I do -- among other gains, it seems worth the Koshish) 

Eyes

My dervish twin
blithely harlequin
soul is drowned
in the dazzling deluge
it sees. Deaf

It never hears
the clamorous whirl
of other things.

But only, only, only
the refrain
of a silence
a peace of being

Beautiful and growing.

Roads

Again
the light wakes me
with a question

That my eyes hear
I smile
seeing new roads, say

I will ride again
for all a man can do
is try.

A Waiting

I have seen
the grasses grow tall
supple, tree straight,

Seen them greenly nod
their purple and russet heads
as the rains thinned

Into dew, wintering
the light turned golden.
my eyes sage

Wells of thirst,
I am full with a sapience
of knowing.

The sickle stab of light
in a tapestry of grass,
is that you, O Time...

I am a waiting
for the coming of words
grey of tongue, to storytell

All that's hard to hear.  

For the Pilgrims of Uttarkhand

The earth flowed,
a river in spate, waters
churned in an inferno.

Death came to you,
sibilant, in a searching
wetness.

Why did my God,
He, the pillar of fire,
do nothing?

You were pilgrims,
utterly His.
Today, they will consign

What remains of you,
putrid and lifeless
to His cleansing embrace.

Consign you to fire,
if the rain wills it, weeping
wetness.

Hindu, I cry too.
And pray. Shiva, Shakti,
Amma, Bhoodevi

Mother nature be kind.

Print runs

What matters
is that the poems we write
survive

(And even find other homes)
like all things mortal
we don't.

Muir, Thoreau, I ?

Yes, my dreams have changed, this
of my free will, I admit.
This too -- in me a content grows

From these days outdoors, amidst
the goodness of trees,
the soil and the dirt

And that tell, the smell,
of the open meadow, the wooded trail;
and the rich fortune of being afoot

On the good, unpaved earth.

Prosaics on doing nothing

Lately, I have realized that I am busy with a lot of things that really have no value, or that in the sum total of things, I am doing nothing. And then again, even when you are busy with the minutiae of doing nothing, sometimes you still end up doing nothing. Like it was day before yesterday, when there was a lot of gusting, thunder and lighting (again a lot of it) and almost nothing in terms of rain here near S's place at Bhubaneshwar. Of course it all contributed to making the evening pleasant (as opposed to the one before) but then what is the sum total of small things like that anyway?

What the afternoon of summer rain (or rather the afternoon of threatened summer rain) did result in was -- light so bad I could do no shooting at all which meant that my date (emphasis on "my", birds of course have their own schedules to keep) with the White-breasted Kingfishers that abound all around hereabouts ( I have already sighted 5 of them in convivial proximity to each other) was a parade that got rained on.

And then again, I saw a "bothered to bits", "almost going around the bend" (at least that's how it seemed to me) tailorbird in a wildly swaying mango tree that's almost eye level from S's bedroom balcony.

Poor thing was half crazed with all the gusting and the thunder and the lightning and the occasional pellets of rain. I spent close to a hour watching it, unable to help mitigate it's misery of hopping from one branch to another, wondering (not for the first time, I will confess)-- where do birds go when it rain? Especially if they don't have trees to nest in?

Ah, all these small things and nothings, no?

I also wrote something in verse, in more or less the same vein...I guess it needs a couple of revisions sometime soon :-)

Untitled

Yesterday, in a burning
nib's crawl on my skin
the heat wrote nothing.

Today, the sky's a page
of silver haze, riven by lightning,
it rains a drizzle, of watery ink.


Like it? Do let me know!

December Dilemmas and drying ink

I have a peculiar relationship with December, for all of five or
more years now. I love December since it is the high-point of the
Indian winter, the weather is bracingly cool and ( I can say this
as have done a fair bit of touring) the landscapes and the vistas
when you are out on the road and in the interiors can be stunningly
breath-taking. And yet, December also means the end of an year;
and the onset of another that comes with its own attendant worries.
This December has been no different; and has added the gravitas
of bringing a lot of memories to do with Orissa (about which there
are quite a few poems in my forthcoming book)to the visual feast
that I have been enjoying in the wilderness I ramble in -- near my
place -- for birding. Significantly, in a throwaback to my childhood
days, I have yet again "bonded" with the outdoors, felt the same way
I used to when I was 11 years old and just learning what my self means
while rambling over the hills that comprise the Durgapur Range.

I may have aged in the interim but somehow the outdoors seem the same;
I could be sitting besides a Pokhuri in Orissa instead of a disused
quarry out here in Hyderabad. I could be rambling over the hills and
rice fields of my childhood, instead of these acres that flank a
military installation (and are left wild to serve as a perimeter)
here in Hyderabad. Its not the mind playing tricks, its an overpowering
surge of memories, a flood of poetry.

As such it has been bloody tough; to collect all finished poems,
rework on them, run edits and simultaneously finding time and
mindspace to write this month's, this season's. Oh well, maybe
its a good problem to have after all.

But the biggest dilemma of December has been what to call the book
and what cover image to run with. Revisiting all that I have gone
through and typing it all out here could end up splaying my fingers
even further; so let me suffice to say that it wasn't easy to decide
on the name Ink Dries. Nor was it to decide on the cover visual,
but then as I say in one of the poems in the book, "if you are ____,
there will always be time".

So there, the cover is decided and bit by bit the book's taking shape
too. And expected to be out in January 2012.



More updates to follow; for now some trivia -- yes, the photograph has
been taken by me and yes, the book has a number of poems dealing with
the "word" and with the most important tool of the writing trade, ink.

Rhetoric Red

Afoot again, somewhere
on the ill-defined travail trail
between unemployability and the stillness
of my soul. Footloose. Shall I travel
for distance -- from prosaics
and an easier way to while away time
than the angst of dealing with words?
What do you say, O road?
the altar this day, of a blood libation
from a hole in my sole?

Untitled

When all airs die
when all waters die
when only land's left -- lonely -- living a lie

Will you mourn then, O time?
Your Kaddish reverberating
the eternal requiem for silence?

Shiva Temple, Palakolu

Knees grating on the cold granite
feet getting numbed by my weight,
I marshal thoughts into coherence
mumbling more than one early morning prayer.

Why do I get drawn, moth-like
to these crowds, babel and mock devotion that I disdain?
Why do I pronounce shlokas in English
and yet don't pray for visas to lands abroad?)

The digital camera grasped crab-like,
I compose and shoot the temple spire in diffused light
to wonder as hundreds of pigeons get aflutter –
was it because I uttered "Om Namah Shivaya"?

(Why can't we who live lives, time our joys right?
Of what use, blessings of sacred rice that slide off a tonsured pate?
Or an ardent, desirously male devout gaze
that's not a spell-binding hymn that Shakti can hear?)

Thus Cycles Time

Here, Silk Cotton
– black, silhouetted
by a bluely summering sky.

Soon,
it will be a bouquet
flowering lush fleshy reds.

I know.

There, Flame of the Forest
– fire flickering in day’s breeze,
a flower treed.

Soon,
this fire will catch wind and water;
even dead rock will simmer heat.

Thus cycles time.

I know.

The Past is Prologue

(What was once
-- vaporized
into nothing

then it rained
and rained,
like an endless cascade

out of His matted locks)
"In the beginning
everything was water."

(The past is prologue)

The Shames of March

In what colour
do statues
of poets and saints
bleed?

When spat at
vandalized
dismembered;
these long dead souls

In what colour
do they weep?

Consciousness

In the end,
everything is reduced --
to another speck
of ash
on Your
manifest form;
to another speck
of ash
on skin darker
than all our
lived losses griefs fears nights

In the end,
everything is reduced --
to another speck
of dust
in You
unmanifest;
to another speck
of dust
beginning on
the cosmic journey to know You
called time.

Saundhi -- An Evening of Poetry

Apart from being a number of things that are food
for thought, Evening Hour is also a bookstore
(and lending library) that sells books online.
My book has been available at Evening Hour's Kukatpally
bookstore for almost 4 months now and Priyanka (who's
single-handedly taking Evening Hour places)
also tells me that it has been doing well and
attracting readers.

For as long as I remember, Priyanka has been
inviting me to interact with Evening Hour's
customers under their "Meet the Author" event.

For as long as I remember, she has also been indicating
a keen interest to organize an event specifically for poetry.

That's the setting then, for Saundhi -- An Evening of Poetry
at Evening Hour's store on 26th of June.
I will be there and in conversation with Dr. A Giridhar Rao.
Thereafter, it will be an "Open Mic" session, for poetry readings.

If you have wanted to meet me and are in Hyderabad on
Saturday do please drop by and say hello.

And yes, if you have wanted to experience the magic of
a poetry reading, or wanted to read out poetry
(by you or by anyone else) to a very receptive audience
in an informal, chilled-out atmosphere, don't miss
this "Open Mic".

Saundhi - An Evening of Poetry
When - 26th June, 2010, 6.30 pm onwards
Where - Evening Hour Store, JNTU Lane, Kukatpally, Hyderabad

Questions about "Open Mic"? Call Priyanka at 040-65873003

Know somebody who you think writes amazing poetry? Let him / her know!

Calling the Rains

Islands white
in a sea blue sky
clouds stay
like inkwells
feeding memories
wet with aquamarine
and a thirst for rain
O, that I could be
a tree dancing in glee
my leaves like windswept hair
breezing
breathless with song

To a nameless hill near Thotlakonda

The moment sat between us
like a table clothed
by a listless sky,
sea water turns
this empty beach into glass
reflecting your wilderness
like some past;
of your eagle eyries
and wild palms
soon there will be no history
as tourists drive up you
for a hotel with a view
unknowing, child-like
the seas of time will
still swish in, to take away
whatever remains
of the silences
that were once simply wild.