One

O spring,
You have a thousand apparel

Green yellow blue
Red pale blue light green
Greenish yellow

Why do you, who make everyone envious,
Spreading  folds worked with golden thread
Inviting everyone to ‘see see’
Come to visit only me wearing black raiment?

Are you too conserving
Your intensely hued flowers
For my tomb,
Just like everyone else?

Two

Perhaps it is to collect
Enough breath to last two- three years
That, while leaving home,
One sighs like a tornado

But
Every time
When I depart after meeting you
Why do I sigh,
Like a final prayer,
As though I was hoarding enough breath
For a lifetime?

Have we studied together?
Or some function
In the same row

Was it when you got tired standing in the queue

Or else at some bus stop
Or

Not in the telephone book
Maybe in the list of people to be invited
Among  names that are listed hoping
They might come in useful sometime
No, not even that

Were you the same before?

I don’t remember
Uttering your name
For any purpose

You are like people in dreams
The one who fell in the well
The one who was driving
The one who stopped me even before the sea,
Something like that

I think your name exists for me to forget it

To think I am mute is one way
To think  you are deaf is another ..

Intelligent believers of democracy,
Let me inform you with a great surge of emotion that I am a candidate in this election
I beg you, request you, beseech you to make us win with great majority  by casting every vote of yours for our symbol

I don’t have to recount the great services rendered by our logo in houses, by-lanes, churches, temples, offices, hotels-  why, in buses, hospitals, monasteries, cemeteries, and every nook and corner of the land

About its great desire to fill even the stomachs of those little children who sleep along the roadside, with no one to look after them

Our sign cannot ignore the mothers and sisters who work in factories of sighs, with only half their stomachs full. That’s why even after being totally spent, it resurrects itself again and again.

Its social sense which decries that even those bodies  on hospital beds, half-burnt, should get justice.

Wont the dead have unquenched desires
Just like the living?

The greatness of our emblem and its universality which embraces unborn babies, the living and the dead, without any consideration of caste or creed or ***

About its reproducibility, the sense with which it can raise or lower itself as the opportunity demanded, its will power which helps it work with a passion, its power to please, its divine gift to give peace and happiness

What about its readiness to sacrifice even the last drop? It thinks only about giving! Please do not fall into the traps of the other signs which are never satisfied whatever it got, and which are ready to split any moment.

Let me ask  you, have we come first in anything? China is standing like its great wall..let me remind you that  if everyone tried together to raise our symbol to great heights, we can at least come first in population

Please do not let go of the chance to win, listing unpolitical arguments like headache, hunger, hatred etc

Our slogan
Contentment for everyone from children to old people

A land where milk flows

Don’t know who writes  or when
Just like cinema posters get changed according to times,
Misspelt swear words appeared on the wall of the ******.

What was written using moss, coal and laterite was sometimes like this..

“The air is aromatic here. Rajiv + Sindhu
A picture of a heart with an arrow through it
Songs like “Rajan sir and Bhanu teacher are in love, man”

Walls got filled
In vengeance to the beatings and impositions.

Amidst the stench of **** and *****,
Love blossomed between moss

The girl’s ****** stood like a temple

The God of the joyful
And the God of the sorrowful
Met on the dawn
Of those who had gone for a walk

Even though they belonged to the same family,
They didn’t even acknowledge one another

The eyes of the God of the sorrowful
Were in the sky
Birds are making fun of him

Clouds ?
They stood their ground,
Stating, ‘ we are not with you’.

The eyes
Of the  God of the joyful
Were on earth
Plants on earth
Smile at him
Dogs, cats and horses
Were vying with one another to walk with him.
The God of the sorrowful told
The God of the joyful,
“Brother,
Sometime or the other
On earth, or sky,
Or in the toilet of the passenger train,
Or in the corner of the bar of the poor,
Or in some Hatta in Sharja
Or in the kitchen of the labour camp
Or in a room of a house with rent  unpaid
Or in court
Or on some strong tree branch
Or in a pawn shop
Or in the middle of the road where children die from collision with vehicles
Or in some sorcerer’s hut

My people will see you
What will you tell them?

In the storm-like **** of the God of the joyful,
The cosmos started gasping for breath.

The coconut climber’s chicken
Is in the well
The climber started to climb into the well
Feet downwards, steps downwards
The chicken climbes again
Fish climb higher
The coconut climber reaches the tip of the well
In between, when he looked down, saw the top of the coconut tree
Saw several heads
The coconut climber is at the tip of the well
Police came
People came
Started to pull out the climber.

When the bakery was bought,
For the sake of novelty, uniqueness, etc,
Called it ‘bitter’

Laddu was bitter
Jalebi ws bitter
Cherry was bitter
Bitter, bitter

What bitterness, said people

The servant got bitter
Sir,
There are no bill collectors to turn away
Flies mock
She at home
Serves bitterness

While sharing the alienation
Which novelty and uniqueness supplied,
With eatables,
Biscuit said

Let’s add the salt of tears,
Eatables will not sell
If bitter

‘Please give me something old”
When the sound of a beggar
Intervened

Myself, who stood for novelty and uniqueness
Told him ‘ you can have this bakery’