dont you think to believe in something is to take a position?
is it possible to take no position at all..?
you neither believe nor disbelieve in anything.
dont you think there is something different happening
in that totally blank space?

Long journey, bad cold—
the girl in the facing seat
smiles each time I sneeze!

Flowers mesmerised
by their glow aloft the tree
do have vertigo.

A flower, lowly perched,
mesmerises my grandchild, chasing...
a blue butterfly.

A hundred crows flutter,
in a cawing, cawing, flutter—they wing
up and down and up and down and round
the crow,
vacant-eyed, shiny-feathered,
lying on the tarred road,
under the sun,
after a hit and run on the highway.

All day up the hill
on wobbly legs we climbed
to reach the Elephant Rock
and crawl our way to the top
at sunset to look
down the final ledge
into an eagle's nest!

And another day—from dawn past into the midnight,
we were on a cliff overlooking a lagoon,
watching the canoes flowing out with the ebb tide,
watching them returning heavy with the evening tide
and,
under the moon,
we found the ebb and flow,
out and in,
frozen…
to the beyond.

And yet another day,
I open the creaking doors of the attic
at our abandoned home,
and amidst the cobwebs,
old trunks, broken furniture and brass vessels,
find the masterpiece,
rolled up and neatly tied.

I unroll the canvass,
stretch its corners straight,
and the painting hits me like a blast and I reel,
struck by a resemblance
engraved in forgotten memory.

Later,
at the art gallery,
I linger long looking for faces
lighting up with recognition...
But the women come and go,
talking of Michelangelo.

All sediments settle down to the bottom of the jar
as the city sleeps
under the golden glow of sodium vapour lamps.
Yet,
from the sidewalk shadows,
a chuckle—
a light churning—
someone laughing in his sleep…

All shops in this other lane
where they sell only antique vessels,
stolen idols and mementos that had changed many hands,
are shut,
ancient padlock on each door.
There is no signpost,
no one to ask which way to go.
And the wind,
silent.

A formless remorse floods in…
I count backwards from hundred to one
and find
an unending procession of ants across my porch,
on some timeless mission,
this morning.

And yet,
I find myself
as spontaneously unpredictable
as a dynamite, lit lead pausing,
on the edge of spark contact—
dead…or sleeping. 

A guttural sound from the backyard—
a cat, back to the wall,
bristling,
claws drawn out,
whiskers on fire,
tail sticking up,
like a deliberate finger,
wagging,
No, no, no, no!