Like you pour into the hilly forest bed,
O Mighty Goddess of Rains
Choose me too, to cultivate,
I am but a stretch of pining land,
Thirsting, fertile, lost in the wait
Of your love that nurtures and creates,
With the gentless of water,
And the ferocity of thunder,
I spread myself bashfully to welcome you inside,
Like the mountains beckon you with valleys open wide,
Come, teem into my soil with your potent spell,
Hug my skin and print me with that post-union smell,
And let life take birth from my yearning soul,
Only you hold the power to make me whole.

Cool mountain breezes tranquilize
My heavy lids, as I shut my eyes
And soak in the graceful scenes,
Aboard the majestic Himalayan Queen,
With her rhythmic chuk-chukking,
Her coaches lazily chugging,
Each slow screech of her ancient brakes transporting
One to an era of few hurries and fewer worries,
Look at her, winding round and round,
Piercing cloud after fluffy cloud,
Almost like a moving tiara adorning
The artistic Simla greens,
That span as far as the eye can see,
Only punctuated by nature's unbridled revelries
Of wild, white flowery shrubs
And lone, or in pairs, monkeys,
And moss-laden tunnels galore-
"Recorded for this route as hundred and three,
But numbering hundred and two in reality",
Points out a septuagenarian co-passenger knowledgeably,
His random trivia prompting me out of my reverie,
Albeit, temporarily!
For soon enough, my senses slip once again
Into a playful camaraderie,
With the innocent romance that only
The mountains can awaken inside of me.

The sound of my footsteps creates frantic echoes.
It is a cold, menacing night.
Darkness envelops me as I walk right into it.
Far away, I see the feeble glow of a streetlight.

I keep looking back nervously,
almost expecting my eyes to meet a stranger's eyes,
when from somewhere behind me comes
a very faint voice.

It's barely more than a whisper and I can't hear what he says.
But the chilly wind sends his message across.
I know that he's calling out to me.
I know what he wants from me.

What stops me from running away from him?
What makes me turn back?
What pulls me towards his invisible form?
What makes me want to surrender to him, everything I have?

The firmness of my feet gets replaced by submission.
I almost float towards him, as if in a trance.
The Woman takes me over, and with her Man
she wishes to perform the Dance.

I stand a few feet away from him
and my eyes stop to converse with his.
"I need you", his eyes say.
"I need you too", mine shoot back.
Oh but, are good girls supposed to express
their desires like that?

The first question arises
and the spell breaks.
He's invisible no more and I can see
his unkempt hair, his unshaven face.
He half-smiles.
He lifts his arm.
I back away.
He might cause harm!
He moves towards me.
He is no longer my beautiful fantasy.

But then he touches his hand with mine.
Once again, he becomes a faceless dream.
Once again, reality begins to lose shape.
Tonight, there's no escape.

It would start like a bubble
in my seven-year old chest,
An ever-expanding ball of
doom, substituting my breath

I was a child, yet I knew death,
I would try inhale- silence
I would hope it would fix itself
but, when I'd try exhale- silence

There was ugly music though,
It rose as I forced my ribs to expand,
Jarring, polyphonic, cacophony,
Of airways brutally locked and jammed.

When a child learns to measure April
nights, with the hours spent in the pain
Of coughing through close-to-nil breaths,
And breathing through coughing again,

One wonders at the extent of the inhumanity
Of those, who are quick to discreetly say,
"Hush, do not speak of this illness to anyone,
It's no illness at all, in the first place!"

"And, here, take these magic pills and potions,
They're slow but will take away all her agony,
No no, don't listen to those white-coated liars,
You don't need puffs of drugs into her body!"

So I ate all those pills and
Drank all those potions,
And I stayed up those nights,
Waiting for their promised actions,

And I went to school the next day,
Groggy, breathless and sleepy-eyed,
Because not-being-seen with an inhaler was
More vital than the breaths of a seven-year old child.

Every time you'll set your pen
To begin a poetic rendezvous,
You'll see it'll never be the same as yesterday,
For your poetry will change with you

Every day is a different breath,
Every breath holds a different sigh,
Every sigh holds a different feeling,
Of infinite kinds of lows and highs

And infinite ways there are, you'll see,
Of putting to words your heart beats,
Every creation will mould itself, closer
And closer to your fluid entity

Of course, there'll be times when the words
Will appear to have forever gone away,
But don't fill yourself with doubts then,
For your heart and your mind are still at play

And when you'll least expect it to,
Your poetry will dutifully return,
With little surprises and anecdotes
It collected while on vacation

Don't be amazed then, when the ink rolls out
To find some wonders and marvels brand new,
For your poetry will change with you,
And, your poetry will change you.

I've always wondered
What it'd be like
To make love in a tent,
Fragrance of soil and sweat
And urgent desire in the air,
With the dark sky lit up with
galaxies and galaxies
of stars and the letters of my name,
Punctuated by your breaths as you'd
Chant it like a prayer,
Risqué and **** and earthy,
Rawer than the last time,
Rawer than that time,
Whispers so titillating they'd
Make the silent night blush,
Make the dewy, green, lush
Grass curl its leaves in shame,
And send the river stream flowing
A little too hurriedly,  
And the clouds a-tizzy,
And the Earth a-dizzy
When I'd open my eyes, exuding
Fire through and through,
I know the sky would mirror me,
And undress into its brightest crimson hue.
I know if we'd make love that way,
The sun would rise earlier that day.