When you uproot a poet, you ****** away her 'self'
Because her self is enjoined to the soil beneath her feet,
With tendrils she seeks sustenance from her land
And blooms into songs of love and promises to keep
When you rob a painter of her colour palette
That shone messily but beautifully of the hues,
Of saffrons and greens merging together and seeping
Into the brown of her skin- the only colour she knew,
You turn her hands into barely-there phantoms,
Unable to create a canvas of her heart's song,
Jarred by chants of 'who are you?' 'where are you from?'
'do you belong?' 'prove you belong!'
How does she prove her belonging to the cradle
That birthed her, that housed her,
Whose elements are admixed with all her blood inside
How does she profess her allegiance to that earth?
It is as if being exhorted to prove she is alive,
inhale, see!, exhale, see!, I breathe, see!
It is as if being wrenched by her limbs to gauge their depth
the pulse in my arteries, see!, these crimson rhythmic spurts, see
O my land, I bleed with abandon;
O my land, I bleed in poetry for thee.

A tiny bundle covered in teddy-printed pyjamas,
He fidgets restlessly on the panel of the giant machine,
Preparing him for the scan is my most basic task of the day
Yet the most annoying one, because I cannot get away
Till he is asleep enough to not be afraid
Of entering into the mouth of that daunting cave,
Treating a child is so very difficult I feel,
No matter how detached you try to be and see
him as a "case", how do you neglect the truth that,
A being not abled enough to even climb out of the cradle,
Has to parent a disease that gnaws at him day after day?
I shake off such aberrant emotions and join his coaxing mother,
I know what she would really wish for at the moment would be,
To scoop him into her arms and lull him off to sleep,
But she has to be the rock she never wanted to be,
The baby had moved the last time, this one has to be error-free
So, allowed by her to take his cannulated hand in my gloved one,
I give the magic drug a carefully measured plunge
Into veins that are too little to bear such brunt,
Yet have been forced to endure this pain that can never be considered
Fair!
We two women watch over him, transfixed,
Noting his every sigh, his every twitch-
The Mother, anxious, cupping his now limp hands only with
The embrace of her eyes,
And I, the Doctor, though following my medical instinct, watching for
His breaths, with each chest rise,
Also find myself enchanted by the mysterious state this child is in,
Is it a state of dreaminess? Or of dreamlessness?
Is he floating into a dark endless sky? Or is he navigating between
Silver-illuminated stars?
What is the meaning of the half smile on his face?
Is he envisioning a world where he is happy,
Sans needles making insensitive designs into his vulnerable skin,
Sans masked doctors promising they wouldn't make him cry,
Sans missed school days and birthday parties,
Sans heated fevers creeping into his bones each night?
Minutes pass and we are broken out of our respective reveries
His fingers have started to weakly trace the red beams of light,
His voice has begun to coo indistinct chatter still unshaped by civilisation,
Its tone and urgency getting louder and surer,
And before he begins to frantically search for his caregiver,
A little more magic will be needed before completion.
I re-enter the glass cabin and inject again into his system,
A last few moments of painlessness and oblivion,
The gaze becomes dazed again, the smile reappears,
His mind comfortably wanders back
Into a calm nothingness and silent, numbed peace.
"The scan has concluded without event", I make a file note,
While the images on the screen begin to light up with disease.

Too many sunny gardens lie unexplored
Too many poems stay unwritten
Too many knots remain tangled as
The fog of Delhi looms menacing,
Inside the stillness of a seven-year void
That only you can bring light in,
If only you'd meet.

Too many expert voices lay a claim on your shape,
You are either too full, or
You have gone too far,
Too many moulds get thrusted at your face,
To some you resemble a pear,
But they feel your should look more double cherry,
And whichever fruit you succeed in turning into,
You still, are a tad too hairy
But then does anyone ever tell you,
That sometimes ice cream will be the only answer
And that is just fine?
That a bedtime prayer can be enough night-time routine,
Which needn't include expensive lotions and creams,
That you need fats as well as you need protein,
As also each little gift that Nature crafted lovingly
For this marvel of a creation that is your Being-
So that your skin is fed and living,
And your knees are lubricated and sprightly,
And your blood is rich and active,
And your soul-
No one will give you
"How I brightened my soul in 4 weeks" tutorials,
But you ought to set your happy soul-goals,
A tummy rub in a sunny lawn on a lazy winter afternoon/
A drenching bath in heavy July rains/
A spontaneous poem effortlessly jotted down on a napkin
Level-happy!
And when you're that happy you will know
That you aren't a cut-out on public display,
Not a fruit,
not a diet,
not a fad that peaks and wanes,
You are an everlasting uniqueness,
You are an undefined shape,
You are that collection of rare energies
That only comes custom-made.

I am the cushion that life first rests in,
The crib meticulously created layer by layer,
The soft bed of flowers, glistening like blood,
The protector of all beings, the seat of care

My love is fuelled by the silver calmness
I gently extract from the first lunar night,
When the moon emerges from its dark sabbatical,
Armed with tales it gathered from the other side

Each day, its luminosity deepens, its stories
Turn more vivid, more wrenching, more morose,
I soak it all in- the pain, the suffering, the injustice,
And colour myself, in the darkest shade of rose

My red is no ordinary red, it is the
Culmination of every sister's deep cry,
It is the crimson of anger that can only be felt,
By the cradle entrusted with preservation of life

I am full and brimming, with pangs too strong
And hues of vermilion too dark to contain,
I rock back and forth, my cot full of stories,
Twisting, flailing and writhing in pain

And then I burst out and let freely flow,
The dam I created with laments of loss and love
Painted with conversations lasting until twilight,
With my cratered friend in the skies above

Petal by petal, as I lose my form and disintegrate,
She is connected to each woman's cry that I assimilate,
Flexed at the pelvis, helpless yet so strong, she listens,
And understands the lore I sing about, every twenty-eighth.

At the darkest end of the rainbow
It lies,
The balance of vitality gone askew
Unleashing its evil side,
It creeps slowly then bares fangs
With speed,
Potent beyond regulation
Its aberrant seeds,
That will grow into whatever they want,
That will grow however they want,
That will grow as much as they want,
Taking shapes of
Flesh and blood and bile and bone
And twisting their faces so
They're recognisable no more,
As if mocking us and our prayers
For Growth-
The immoral, the immortal side of the coin,
Cancer, the evil twin of Life.

Like dew drop-crusted petals
Of a plump red rose,
One curved layer after another
Guides me in her flower unexplored,
She sits cross-legged and wonders
Who conditioned us to associate
The Rose with Love,
It must have been you darling,
Incarnated century after century
Flooding the lover's heart with the
Scent of your intoxicating being,
The red pouring into the eyes of the poet,
Creating volumes that will till eternity
Sing praises of how even the Rose
Bows down to your Rose,
Of how the Heavens tell tales
About your enchanted Gardens,
And in this century my dear,
I am the one blessed
To have been driven insane,
Dedicating flower after flower to your name

When the bustling day retires behind
The night's starlit charcoal curtains,
My maverick awakens to bring to life
Music from the silence of your absence

Namaz was less prayer and more about
Standing beside Amma and mirroring her,
When as a toddler I stood on the chataai
Murmuring as she did,
Bending down as she did,
Resting my head on the floor
And then waiting to come back up
When she did,
Some days I'd be so sleepy I'd sway on the mat,
Only to be jolted up by an angry Hmph! from her side,
Some days the patterns on the mat seemed like
They were God's silhouette- something she always denied,
Times of silently bonding with the Almighty and the Amma,
Slowly faded into me deciding to pray solo,
When the hour of maghrib coincided with a
Mother-daughter tiff,
And even when we stood praying side by side,
I'd make it a point to not let our sajdas coincide,
On the mat laying bare our rifts and divides.
I wonder if Amma noticed me daydreaming during prayer,
My musings whether God understood English,
My requests to Him to make that crush like me back,
My teenage self angrily bubbling at her obtrusions to my 'freedom'
As she prayed and prayed for me.
Years have passed,
And how I'd love to synchronise again,
The pace of our prayer, the length of our sajda,
But the days, and this new house,
Are now ridden with so much more clutter,
That, though the chataai has stayed the same,
There's not enough space to accommodate
Both daughter and mother.

Why is it so hard to find my voice
In the cacophony of large gatherings,
Yet so easy to draw on paper, words
Silently arrayed into profound meaning?

He sees me from a distance and
passes a hand through his hair,
His smile changes, his voice does too,
His movements pick up a flair
Reserved for only those moments
of hopeful eye contacts,
that harbour even the remotest possibility
of culminating into the act-

The act, for which my body
Prepares me month after month,
Clouding my senses and bombarding me
With erogenous oestrogen and ferocious pheromones,
That dictate my actions every mid-cycle,
To deck me in colour and spray myself fragrant,
Like a flower opening herself and welcoming
Her visitor who's looking at her from a distance,

What more, say, is existence,
Than the dance of the elements?
The heart wraps it up in candy and fluff,
But the mind and the flesh call its bluff,
And sway to the tune of 'find and mate',
The steps known to them, though never taught,
The mind swaying along to procreate,
The flesh joining in, to recreate.

But how can I forget you,
I met you at an age when
Everything seemed possible,
There was time left for everything,
When my mind body heart and soul
Were blank pages open to all colors,
When I stayed up half night to catch
That song on the radio which reminded me of you
I met you at the age when the touch
Of your name written on my hand
Gave me butterflies,
You became all my love songs
You became all my poetry
You became all my innocence,
My optimism, my naivete, my hope,
You were my year seventeeth,
And even on my thirty-seventh,
Fifty-seventh, seventy-seventh,
You will forever be my year seventeenth,
So how can i forget you?

Hearty laughter and untamed voices,
Bright red lipsticks and brazen choices,
Bold heels studded with some virtues-some vices,
Tongues laden with sharp, unabashed spices
Go out and out, and be proud, women,
The time is right, to be loud, women!

My blood is gurgling lava swishing
Along the walls of my veins,
Turning 'red' every cell in its way,
Devouring my insides in raging flames,

As my skin simmers in silence,
But doesn't dare divulge,
The power of the quiet fire that
Seethes, raves, storms and engulfs!

He doesn't notice the goosebumps.
If he did, he could map out each inch
Of my body where my flesh lights up with
Desire at the mere sight of him.

He doesn't notice I'm beating about the bush
When I'm complimenting his eyes,
While my insides are squirming at the
Nervous thought of the ways infinite,

In which I'd overcome this ****** distance,
That is holding me back, keeping me away.
I know the Universe is buying time, fearing the
Electric aftermath our union would create.

I'll make sparks fly, we'll go see stars together,
Our skins'll birth fire, that'll satiate our hunger,
I'll let him touch raw love with his bare fingers,
Just a matter of time before we breach this barrier.

Multiverses infinite,
Endless permutations
Harmonise together into
Fortuitous combinations
Of planets and stars,
Of fluid minutes and hours,
Zoning time into a ceaseless warp,

Yet, the sole instance I ever achieved
Absolute **Mehfooziyat
Was in that stationary speck of a moment,
When my heart lay idle in your arms.

As if in mild amusement at the way
I undermine myself and let my flaws
Cast shadows over my worth,
My neurons light up and give birth
To electricity that sprints through,
Weaving ideas, creating magic,
Shaking me up and lifting me high,
Bringing me face to face, eye to eye,
With the beautiful truth which sets me apart-
That my body is the house of art.

How empowering it is to be able to sprinkle
Just the amount of turmeric powder,
And to know just how much of a pinch,
Is that pinch of salt and coriander,
Which'll swirl around together in sputtering oil,
Dancing with crisp bay leaves and cloves,
Bathing in the crimson of finely ground chilli,
Forming a fragrance engulfing the sacred stove,
The fragrance that defines every hand that cooks,
Each concoction of spices distinctly set apart
By infinite proportions of masalas and herbs,
Carving infinite routes of satisfying the heart,
The kitchen is the powerhouse of a home,
And the ones who man it are technologists
Who day after day, create curry that reaches
Not just the gut but the self of who consumes it,
It is only when you stand, teaspoon in hand,
While lightly brown onions look up to you in anticipation
Do you realise that forming food is no simple, menial task
It is a scientific, artistic and spritual exploration.

I thought I had enough weight on my shoulders,
Till I saw him
Neatly pile up all our suitcases,
Tie them with knots tight and sure,
Then place the burden that was his livelihood
Onto his curving back, bending it more,
And turn with a swiftness that defied
The grey of his hair and the lines on his face
The coolie walked fast and proud,
While we, empty-handed, struggled to stay apace.

When you're born out of a broken marriage,
You unwittingly become part of it,
No one asked you if you wanted to,
Yet you mediate,
As you grow, you participate,
You cease to be a child very soon,
You are the third spouse who entered
Way after the honeymoon,
You live with the everyday-fear of this
Arrangement falling apart,
You don't know why you're saving it,
Despite it being so toxic to all three minds and hearts,
But, as if you were born for just that purpose,
You strive for it everyday,
You take sides everyday,
Being a successful last straw
Is your daily pretend-play,
And suppressed resentment, your best friend,
Those born out of a broken marriage will know,
Having a loving father and a loving mother
Is not the same as having a family where
Everyone loves each other.

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.

Both
Too much,
and too little
Commotion,
Can mute the poet's emotion

What a marvel,
The truth that we
Are dying from the
Moment we have
Come to life,
Our existence is mere
Tug and pull between
De- and regeneration,
Our body prods our cells on,
Pumping short-lasting elixir
Into their microscopic selves,
Ions and stars of energy
Rushing in and gushing out,
We are nothing but
The friendly contest
Between flourish and decay,
One will lose tomorrow,  
The other concedes today.

The photo of her high tea                            
With its flowery cups,                                  
Its cookies and scones,                                
Arranged in aesthetic order,                      
Filtered to perfection and                            
Posted online soon after,                            
Is her current most-liked.                              

The scene of him frailly
Scouring the waste truck,
His skin invaded by bones,
And bathed in gloomy odour,
Painted with deprivation and
Destitute disorder,
Doesn't make it to the spotlight.

*The High Tea meanwhile, earns another Like

The skin whispers and summons her hither,
To where secret stories lie hidden in depths
That she had not yet discovered,
The sigh of the flesh, the magnetism
Of touch, the electricity of lust beckon,
Her steps momentarily waver,
Yet she retraces them just in time,
Managing to overhear the conversation
Her heart was having with his,
There were sounds of throaty laughter,
Friendly nudges and incessant debates,
There was a fragrance of coffee in the air,
A nip of flirtation had begun to dance with care,
And there were cushions scattered on the floor.
She sat on the pink one,
And he sat at the other side,
Both immersed in that conference,
Knowing they would let their hearts
Talk each other out,
Before the skins began to talk out loud.

The purple lights up the dinner table,
Mocking me a little for the mess I made,
Ah, the conjugal suicide of forgotten
anniversaries of first meetings or
first conversations, or first hand-holdings,
I still don't seem to remember
As I try and find sleep on the couch tonight,
Oh, my bundle of organised chaos,
My lover of trivial celebrations,
My collector of silver and purple lanterns,
Do you think I can't hear you impatiently turn?
Did you really think you could sleep soundly?
Do you think I don't know it is for me you yearn,
The outcast, the culprit, forced into exile unfairly?
I can foresee the very moment you'll press into the sheet,
The instant before you'll resign that you can take it no more,
I can sense the very second you're biting your lip,
I know you thought-deep, there's no deeper I can go,
And in that beautiful, eternal pause,
Between bite of lip and sigh of concession,
Between stubborn resilience and renunciation,
We'll both wait, tugging at the palpable tension,
Which is the test of my punisher's power,
And for me, a premonition of the sweet taste of love,
That is about to follow, just the moment after.

Isn't ripping a
Soulmate away from your insides,
Too,
A kind of suicide?

I warned him I was poison,
That my womb spouted lava,
That there was fire between my legs
And it spared no visitor,
Yet he laughed, the fool,
And the proud, vain loon,
Did not pause a moment before
Barging in unwanted,
Like he had, into ninety-nine
other forbidden heavens,
Eager to add a tale more of dominance,
To the ninety-nine others
He would proudly tell,
Only to emerge- consumed,
scorched, devoured by my fumes.
Hadn't I told him I was hell?

He doesn't have to be
A poetry person
To be my person

Showing up unceremoniously
From behind prissy waistbands unyielding,
Giggling out between breaths ****** in,
Unabashed, untamed rolls of me,
Not needing flattering illumination or angles,
Only truth-shopped and real-brushed,
Sharp with their curves and bends and curls,
Their glory making me feel like the cover girl
That i am.

Never really mastered the art of intrigue,
I sometimes wish I had that skill,
Of treading light,
Of being the diva
Surrounded by a mist of aura,
Controlled in laughter,
Calculatedly revealing,
Measuredly unraveling
Her inner self.
I stomp in love,
I bare it all in love,
I laugh with abandon,
I shout with animation,
I cry in immoderation,
I never really learnt to leave
Anything for the imagination,
And it's the greatest gamble,
The toughest game,
To tear your heart out and
hold it in your palm,
And show it to them,
Look, this is how I beat,
Not many can deal
with someone this real.

I wonder how much sugar it'll take
To drown your bitter aftertaste

You'd find the curtains lightly dancing
to the tune of that song,
to which we'd bashfully waltzed
the first time you had held me,
You'd smell the musk
Spreading its wings in the air,
That you once said, drove you
dizzy when you were around me,
You'd find poetry singing softly
Behind the veil of silence,
Reading aloud my verses of love,
Calligraphed on the bare canvas
Of my skin, in Urdu,
Curving and turning shyly,
For you to trace with gentle fingers,
Right to left, misra to misra,
Sher to sher,
The beher of each caress
Matching the stirring of my breaths,
Culminating at its pinnacle,
Into a ghazal, your ghazal,
That would, with demure grace,
Take form and calmly embrace,
The raging fire, the desperate uproar
Lashing at my parched, starved soul.

He was sewn into her life like
Fine embroidery on silk,
In he went, sharp needle tip
Into her softness digging,
Then piercing her inside out, emerging
Only to be driven again back in,
He was the rose that was carved
On her pale, plain form;
His red completing her deficiencies,
His fragrance camouflaging her inconsistencies,
A Prince Charming,
Made just for her, she was told,
With sword of steel and armour of gold,
His grip hurt?- "It was supposed to, a little bit!"
His thorns stung?- "Oh surely you can bear it!"
Why was he there?- "Hush, woman!
You aren't supposed to ask that!
The rose is your crown, it is your badge
of honour, of modesty, of shame,
The little holes and their bleeding flames
Are marks of the strength of a woman, you see!
The strength that to only you, nature brings,
To stitch your man on to your fragile skin
To exhibit the flower, hiding the thorns within,
To gracefully mask the bruises, the puckering,
For you need him to fill your shortcomings"
-*without questioning.

Brewing over a cup of steaming coffee,
And warm, fluffy, syrupy pancakes,
Our chemistry could be the perfect recipe
For a weekend romantic escapade.

Grand tales of eternal, undying love
I really, can not promise you,
But my giggles around you are real,
The new stride in my step is true!

And every time my eager eyes
Communicate with your smiling ones,
My winter-heart heaves sighs so deep,
I sometimes fear you could hear them!

So, wrapped in mufflers and woolly caps,
Come, laugh along at my red-tipped nose,
And live a short-lived fairy tale with me,
Who knows, we may just outlast the snows!

We dressed her in delicate silk
And gave her glittering jewels to wear,
A crown with rubies on the top,
And flowers for her fragrant hair

We placed wings on her dainty shoulders,
Crystal heels on her slender feet,
We draped her in beauty head to toe,
Gave her the shape of all our fantasies,

So that when we picked at her flawless skin,
And tore off her silken gowns,
When we pulled at her rose-petalled hair
And her lovely stone-studded crown,

When we chased her into darkness,
As she tripped on manacled heels,
When we watched her try to fly but fail
With bejewelled wings that were too heavy,

We could baffle her, confuse her, fool her
Into believing it was not our fault,
For we had revered and worshipped her,
Could the devotee be responsible for her fall?

Oh not at all!

She was too beautiful,
She radiated too much,
She was too pristine,
Easily dirtied on touch,
She was too striking,
She was too bold,
To not be stripped off of all that glitter
And all that shameless gold.

Together, they were like that wiry hair with
A split end she would obsessively try
To peel apart,
Not sure if more harm would be done,
With or without it in her heart.
She knew she could cut it off
and be done with it in a go,
Yet she picked at it,
Deriving strange painful pleasures in tearing
Each other away,
Till he would fall into the abyss of oblivion,
And her, weakened, distorted,
A lone strand would remain,
Never would she be the same again.

I found myself rooting for the tiny ant
The spider was trying to trap in its webbed snare,
No thoughts did I spare before swiping a finger,
and helping it make a dramatic escape

As I looked at the spider, left food-less,
Rearrange itself in its meticulous net,
I wondered at the strangeness of this
Little world of ours, and also its pointlessness

We make it seem so rosy and pretty,
Embellish it with garlands of emotions,
But underneath lies the truth of its existence,
Made up of cruelty, chaos and commotion

The Designer painted it beautifully,
But gave it finer embroideries of pain,
He threw in an entire cosmos together,
And arranged it into a food chain

Compartments and more compartments,
Of colour and country and gender galore,
Hustle and bustle to stay put in a labile balance,
That is forever tipped at the cusp of war

We fool ourselves with the sham that our lives
Depend on friendships and love and such stunts,
When what we are, if we think about it,
Is a part, of one gigantic hunt

A hunt for alimentation,
And monetary satisfaction,
And physical satiation,
Does being conditional deserve glorification?

I wonder if I've turned into a permanent cynic,
It may very well be just a phase,
Though the spider would be cursing me for sure,
Not too romantic it is, sabotaging a prey!

I wonder if the universe listened
To the song of an aching voice,
If a weak heart wrapped in pain
Reached out to its imposing poise.

If it did, oh how I'd beg and plead
for it to tell its stars to re-align
To where I'd left my fairy tale unfinished,
And take me back to those simpler times.

Your breaths were soft murmurs
Muffled within the green whisperings
of the hooded lush covers,
I could catch a glimpse of your
bold cheekbones when light bounced
off them; light that would come and go
of its own accord,
From where and where to, who knew,
We only kept going on,
Deeper and deeper wheels took us,
Guided and misguided by the silences
That guarded the secrets of the forest,
Secrets that weighed down its rustling leaves,
Like they weighed us down everyday,
I would have licked off that bead of sweat
that must be rolling off your cheek right now,
Then why don't you?, a cricket quizzically chirped
Look, even the wilderness is talking to me,
Why don't you!, I wanted to ask,
But I didn't, the maze of tree trunks engulfing us
Tighter by the second,
The jungle looked so benign in the daylight,
Its vibe gentle, its voice tranquil,
Its green, so calm in the sun,
Turned to a bloodthirsty red by the night,
And a million stealthy eyes opened and followed
our drive, laughing at us as we lost track,
You and I,
Speeding away from sanity,
Hurtling away from humanity,
Rocketing away from reality,
No words spoken, but our hearts
pounding in unison as we ran,
In hopes of launching into that dimension
That existed sans sense of material,
Sans sense of reason,
Sans sense of self.
Remember, I've promised you nothing,
Said the jungle elusively,
Winding its curves dangerously steep,
Mysterious even in its time of sleep,
While your foot harshly pushed the pedal,
In the desperate hope that bound us
That if we could wander off track like last time,
and stumble upon that dimension once again,
and strip ourselves naked of the secrets,
and let our truths and our lies be consumed
by the Jungle,
Perhaps, once again,
Like last time,
We could lose it all to find each other.

You are the ending
to my wandering
Poem

Catch me when I'll fall
with the sun rays,
crossing clouds and
bursting into bright
rainbow colours,
Catch me when I'll paint
the fading sky orange,
dancing the monotony away,
I'll come to you, every day,
From dawn to dusk,
Feel my familiar touch,
Around you, don't miss me,
For when the day will fall and
I'll be gone, just look above
And you'll find me there,
Twinkling bright among the stars,
With my promise, with my truest promise,
That I'll meet you again, tomorrow,
Shining into your beautiful arms

Are you a ******?*
Whirlwinds of flashes
Passed in front of her eyes
And she shut them tight,
Remembering,
Had he touched her?
No.
Had he touched her?
No!
Had he touched her?
Yes...
He had touched her deeper
Than the reach of physicality,
He had touched her firmer than
Sensations of all tactile reality,
She knew kisses that tasted of Forever,
Without having kissed at all,
So what could she answer!
She was untouched,
Yet she was not.
She recollected herself,
Replied a meek Yes,
And felt herself violated by
Another alien self,
A tear rolled down silently,
As her soul bled to death.