The Forever city

Suffocating, Struggling,

Strutting along,

Huffing and puffing

In the heat, and rain,

A moment is too precious to lose,

The now lasts forever,

Lest the money drops

And the rents raise,

The meters recalibrate

To tell, you aren't enough,

And there's another to take your matchbox

With fire within, and a hunger burning

To conquer all that's in front, and behind-

A forever jungle of hidden dreams, and varicose cement.


Bombay,

An assault on your senses,

An invasion on all you know,

A dichotomy reclaimed from itself

Yet

Where no one has a moment-

A second isn't enough to earn a living

And you need more than a vision-

For all you can see is the concrete or the sea;

An innate urge to live,

To be,

Thoughtlessly driven,

A mind without knowing its own exhaustion.

Bombay,

A city that breathes, as it chokes,

Counted and counting,

Pumped by dopey fumes,

Jacked by vitamin M,

Deluded by its own grandeur

Growing and growing

Till all it sees is itself.

Parel or Vashi,

You can stand at a point of no return,

With some hope,

Peer at the sea

And still think you are here,

In this city, endless,

The forever city,

Bombay.

The paths to home

All paths lead home,

And you reach on a somber dusk morrow,

To find that the garbage smell is now perfumed,

The dark alleys are now with rude advertisements of hope,

The silent corners now choke with fumes from SUVs and their desperate honking ruckus,

The broken windows of a forgotten home, is now a mall with anonymous black glass panes.

All just a moment away from the truth,

Clinging on, tight-fisted, red-eyed, lest dreams takeover

And you see the fecund fake rumble and rubbish,

In crass giggles and matchbox homes,

Cenotaphs for a drugged nation.

All hope spun from trauma,

Of generations upon generations,

Caste, creed, skin color, religion,

Thoughtless rage, and mindless veneration.

All vanity, a patented hubris,

3D holograms of smiling bearded men,

Posed and poised upon a pedestal, all too high,

For those of mere commonsense to question.

All roads lead away,

A journey through forsaken lanes,

Where myths of muscle and grit,

Grime and slime, farce phases of progress,

Peel away like hastily laid tar,

Sophisticated pancake for the real man,

Lest you think everything is a hologram.

All homes smell of old ancestors,

You just have to live long enough.

Layers of roads upon lakes and towns,

How far deep do you want to dig?

Maybe to strike water,

Or oil,

Or maybe an effigy,

                                Of an old truth,

Which still hasn't been burnt at a stake.

Green

Muddy village roads between green fields,

Measured and quartered between families;

Pledged and seized, 

For dowry,

For a son-in-law who ran away six months later

With a neighbour's daughter,

On the last bus to the big town.

Here's where the fire last ate,

The once green grass and wild bush,

Dried by a relentless summer sun,

Every last drop licked clean;

Till a nonchalant tourist lit a cigarette

And awoke a deep-held desire

To scourge the land barren,

A glorious flame that ran past boundaries

And left the tiger nothing but farm chicken to eat.

Manicured paths amongst green bamboo trees,

Calls of songbirds, and one, beautiful and desperate

For a mate, for a flock, a murder, a raison d'etre.

The last of the species, he cries and sings,

All in vain, 

But for the award-winning photograph, 

Hung in a gallery, 

Neat and chic on a sour cream wall, 

Mostly lifeless, 

Almost withering, hopeless.

Green number plates with tax breaks

Silent scooties that honk mercilessly, 

Up and down bumpy roads, stirring dust, setting off allergies.

A planet in crisis-- the storms no more blow 

as per ancient winds, 

But are carried by young fury, 

Hot-blooded without empathy,

From afar and near, as if gathered by a religion,

An incandescent sky who may have been a God,

But now a fallen deva, bemoaning a pralaya

A fallen angel, hell too is a duty.

In the beginning, there was a green leaf,

And on it a baby with a toe in mouth,

Tongue-in-cheek at a species which 

will forget itself in avarice and glory.

In the beginning were two, 

maybe green, maybe blue, 

we don't know, for we can't see, 

our sight too narrow and firmly tied 

by eons of the hunt and scurry. 

In the end, there will be,

Something endlessly green, pink, white, black,

Or maybe nothing. 

When no human sees, 

does it even matter for our memory?

துள்ளும் இளம் காண்

கற்றவன் கோவிலில் தஞ்சம் கேட்டானாம்

பச்சை இளம் துளிர் நுநியில் முடிவிலி

நான் அறிந்ததோ முற்றிலும் துளி.

I Parcel my dreams ahead

I parcel my dreams ahead 

In the longhorn of a goods train,

Passing silent homes, chugging south,

On tracks almost dead,

Past stations, empty and bereft. 

The pendulums of civilisation sway a bit slower,

 And the seconds seem to last much longer,

In this day that never seems to end,

One with many seasons, and lives, 

An abeyance stuck in crisis; of its own shadow, affright.

The summer was an hour ago,

The mangoes fresh and ripe,

To be pickled and souffled,

Cut and quartered, fought over,

Like nations over imaginary borders. 

The fear hangs on like a grandfather clock,

In the silence of midnight, you hear its sway,

An inheritance, generation upon generation, 

Waiting, and waiting more, for time to pass,

Or to know the bug is no more. 

The torn days of the calendar lay

In the nooks and crannies of a staircase landing,

Tera Incognita, waiting to be swept away someday, 

By broom or breeze,

Into forgotten dreams.

The spiders come and go,

And weeds eat into the concrete;

As the sun crosses back to south, 

An evening breeze whispers

Scandalous tales, and salacious conspiracies. 

Into the embers of the dying west, 

Someday, I shall go,

Aboard a flight with bad coffee,

Cardboard sandwiches and tinned hope,

Packed and parcelled for bonded souls.  

 

  

 

Stillness

Is a city even alive if nothing moves?

The long horn of the trains that rush south,
The flights dropping their wheels to land home,
The blaring honking rowdy roads--
All comatose,
almost lifeless,
no murmur, no breath.

Stillness.

The street lights burn, and the crows caw sleeplessly,
The racketing parakeets scream past free,
A lonely kite surveys its next meal;

Yet,
Stillness.

There are whispers, there is a mild laughter,
But the fear hangs in the air like a colloidal dream--
How small is a strand of RNA?

So small that we cannot imagine till we see.

Stillness.

This now is too long to bear,
Is there a moratorium on life?
Can we wake up day after and find the world as it was?

Nagaram,
A city is that which moves.
And when it ceases to be,
We are all dead, even if a bit alive.

All those soles burnt on the dug up roads,
Now I am a prisoner, self-constrained.
The hours flow into one another,
Tomorrow is still part of the same dream.

Breathe

Breathe,

               Let go,

Breathe.


Can you see time,

Can you

 
              Be born,

              Be alive,

And die,

In just this present,



A now forever,

Where it all lasts forever,

And then just doesn't.


Are you just a dream?

What if a moment is all there is,

Time nothing but a persistence,

Life, a feeling that refuses to go away.



Can you wake up every day?

See,

        The light streaming in;

Moonlight,

The shore you crave is 5 miles away.


Maybe memories,


Maybe.


But now,

               live,

                        Be alive.

Live.



Breathe,

               Let go,

Breathe.

Dreams

There are your dreams,

And then there are mine,

But all I wish to know is ours.


Let me see the stars twinkle in your eyes,

And the ocean sand between our toes;

Let the summer moon cast its long shadows,

On us, and

           Our footprints on this silent shore.


To hold this moment forever— 

Misty car windows, and a slow patter rain,

A wish-lash,

                     Together,

We close our eyes and blow.


Rowdy parakeets on a summer noon,

Chillies, and mangoes,

The sunglasses cannot hide

The laughter in our eyes,

The joy in our words,

           unsaid,

In the tip of our tongues,

             felt.


This is our now—

Hand in hand;



This was our yesterday—

Silent whispers of hope;



This is our morrow—



The stained leaves at the bottom of the cup know.

The aircon

There are sunsets and numbers that add into themselves,

There are green fields, and sum of parts,

Snowy deserts that stretch to infinity,

Ice that melts like hope on a warm Madras day.


Every 'morrow is a waking,

A day to do your shoelaces and ties,

To adjust watches, and judge the time,

To never sleep, but dream with your eyes open.


Summer lasts forever in my city,

The aircon at twenty-seven degree C is my winter,

My snow-capped peaks, my pashmina,

My Buddha in minus five, smiling with belief.

Hope

I.

Angsty hope of childhood,

A distant memory,

Dirty shoes and tip-toeing

To avoid the check after the assembly.


Angsty hope of youth,

Not so long ago,

Trying to slip in with slippers,

Past the bar-tender high on club rules.


Angsty hope of the twenties,

The morrow stretches forever,

Past summers and winters,

Hope a bachelor, mouldy and grouse.



II.

If magic doesn't happen even with all the believing,

Then there's no point to moon risings or rainbows,

Then there's no point in wondering at the stars,

There's no point in roaming the empty roads,

There's no hope in the serenade of the sleepless crows.



III.

Not all dreams are seen in your sleep,

Some are lived between prosaic every day,

In the midst of a summer drought,

In the eye of a winter cyclone,

In a garden of fallen trees and dead flowers,

The long walk along the road that ever ends,

The yearning at waves that are never lost for sounds.


IV.

The clocks show the same time every day,

The long hand losing the race again and again,

Tick after tick, each lasting an eternity.

Time is seen in the wrinkles on our foreheads,

And the voice of your grandfather, now dead.

The embers shall swallow your memories,

Songs on Gods who maybe, and you.

There's no road sign to your street,

None to mark your house,

The memories lurk like strangers in a station,

Forever looking into the distance

For a train that never shall come.



V.

Maybe life is a long moment,

Which shall end for that's how long a moment lasts.

Maybe life is a dream,

Which ends when you wake up to the other, now and then.

Maybe life is a memory,

Which shall fade away into a non-existence.

Maybe life is hope,

A quest forever, a quest to reach evermore.


VI.

Silence


VII.

ஓசை

தென்றல் வீச , அலைகள் ஓங்க

நீ பாடடா , நம் சுதந்திர ஓசை.

அடங்காதே  , மிரளாதே,

உன் குரல் அடர் உடைக்கும்,

நம் வாழ்வு இனி மண்ணுக்கும் இசைக்கும் .

பாவம் காற்றில்  நடனம் ஆட

மனம் மோகித்து இன்பம் பெற

பாடடா,பாடடா

நம் சுதந்திர ஓசை.

ஏங்கும் உன்னிதம் இங்கு உள்ளதோ

வியப்பும் ஒரு இதம் தருமோ,

 பாடடா,பாடடா

நம் மறுவழி ஓசை.

எத்திசையும் உறுதி ஓங்கும்

அகம் நம்பி பலம்  ஓதும்

இனி பாடடா,பாடடா

நம் பரம்  ஓசை.

தென்றல் வீச , அலைகள் ஓங்க

நீ பாடடா , நம் சுதந்திர ஓசை.

அடங்காதே  , மிரளாதே,

உன் குரல் அடர் உடைக்கும்,

நம் வாழ்வு இனி மண்ணுக்கும் இசைக்கும் .

x