Drawing behind, her gathered black cloak ,
the night reluctantly withdraws
behind the numerous skyscrapers in the making
springing up, impatiently at various stages of scramble,
going one step above each passing day
as if there is no intention to stop,
till the day a fortress is built up around Bangalore.

Not the garden city of yore, any more
an  unfamiliar painted doll, robbed of innocence,
full of malls, glass, chrome and marble pomp.

The fluorescent eyes of the city, bids
farewell to the retreating night
with which it played varied games till morn,
and wearily view the approaching daylight.

The world is changing its color, now, so fast with vigor
yet, it is just the same as ever, in essence.

A blue train wearing a white turban,
measures the bottom length of the new skyline.
As I watch, an observer of a bubble, a phenomenon
I look through the eyes of one similar,
a few million years later and see light, only light dominate.

Then, like I do, two eyes would observe and
think of eternity, the imaginary construct called time
and the interplay of black and white and the time in which both dissolve

Behind me you stand quiet, taking in my scent, dense with pheromone,
a witness on the verge of arousal, you gently caress my neck
your sharp teeth bite at my earlobes, sowing goosebumps
all through my body's landscape
Your long fingers, love to travel all  my back and shoulders,
I dissolve within the present, travel down with your fingers,
your love transforms in to gentle all engulfing caresses,
that alone is real all through the ages.

I view through the eyes of the stranger,
who would see what I see in another time, in a form different
then we would have to accept, we are one and the same!

What repose and subtle wonder it is
to venture looking backward
upon my written name.

Scribbled, lacking coherence in its characters,

doctored suggestively towards containing
 an inherent “literary” edge

out of just what it is,

an association of sounds,

(parent’s gifted accidents of intention)
commingled and pushed into

an accepted truth by repetition

and repetition alone.


The surges of black-tongued self-consciousness

-that I’m far above the spot-scratching undergraduate

notion of admiring my personal stamp, of falling in love

with myself by using “bigger” words to fetishize
my most basic claim on having existed, of being HERE-

are given rise. 


These fade, by examples immemorial, to give way to other voices

striving for attention, to grasp their mark upon the page.

Late evening



On a wall,

Initials carved with a filthy bar

of rationed soap

In Dungeon Europe’s eastern range.

Where prison bars once hounded in

where beating’s sounded off 
morning’s crisp hue

The inevitable made its finer points here

Trampling over names and voices

lost to history.


Now a museum

the lunch-time rush 
of internationals

(who mostly work for corporations with offices in every place they travel)

Photograph themselves with expensive cameras

After shuddering, some even hazarding a tear

in considering what fates have befell

occupants on the wrong side of a different bureaucracy

 ....but all that matters, after they leave, is the the proof 

they were there. And how it was just how they imagined.


Morning, in my bedroom

and I’ve written something again...



I can stack it away

if I feel that I failed to capture

what I wanted to be seen

(if not in my own handwriting,

then on some gilded white screen

letters upright and well-rounded.)



How much can it matter to me?

Seeing my own name

allotted above or at the end

of some juvenile thoughtpiece
the kind editors everywhere
are doing their best to get rid of.


I suppose I write because it pushes me out of the expected

it releases me, on these mornings, these graceful, time-blessed

mornings, out of the cell.

To roam among the other skeptics, who thought aloud to wistfully

spend time away from the routine

To hold aloft a lighter-flame for those trapped inside.

You measure in
vast spaces that my memory fills
Revolving.
I take you where
you thought before you might
get left behind.

Instead
Our Love is
sly references
to Private Jokes and
how your eyes light up
as you twirl around inside
your favorite Polka Dot Dress.
Knowing
“That’s when I think you look your best.”

With Egyptian eyeliner
to illuminate the understatement.

Kudos.
Deserved,
after all you do accept
(Not without forgiving humour...)
A latent tendency in myself
to elongate an awkward silence
after committing whichever topical
and firmly established social faux pas
given the setting.

Not forgetting,
my oft lauded lack of a certain finesse
Establishes
around my name a peculiar sentiment
Windswept spiky hair and caught-out schoolboy face
Notwithstanding.

Perhaps,
“it’s clever not to deny the girl”
her entertainment.

I stand above my bed
And examine the damage.
Blankets this way and that
Pillows all over
Sheets tangled up around themselves.
Proof of something that
Only hours ago
Left this place empty.
I take in the rubble
And breathe deeply.
I lower myself down to those
Tangled sheets
And backwards bedspreads
And fill my lungs with you.
I pull them up around me
And close my eyes
And wish for this place to be
The same kind of battleground
Again tomorrow.

This is the year of the search party
The year we stop looking for the answers
The year our inner commotion
Winds down to a clockwork steady

The year where everything is okay
Because it is
Because you are not your lame job
And you are not your last semester
And you are not your bills piling up

You are the moment your lungs erupt
A steady stream of your own breath
Taste it like biting cold
Or cigarettes
Feel it like a mudslide on your own skin

Let it go

Let it go like the millions of choices you can make today
Let every choice you have ever made fall away
So that you may take a moment to be satisfied right now

Assume you had no other options
And because you had no other options
Where you are is where you were meant to be

This is the year made easy
The year the search party found the answers
And hand delivered you note

The year you are a nuclear reactor
Every time you stand still
Feel the hum of your breath
As it fills up your chest
And you get so hot
The snow bending your branches melts away

The year you do not still yourself because of your anchors
You still yourself to watch them fall away

This is the year you make peace with the past

Be in the moment
Make this the year of forgiveness
And the year of less stress
The year you shake hands with your vices
The year of really good ***

The year the search party stopped
And you walked away
Dropped all your gear
Because what you found was a mirror
And it felt like you saw yourself for the first time
Because you did

Because there are no answers
Because every choice you have ever made brought you here
And right here is where you were meant to be

Wind keeps on
reminding the waves
something cryptic,
even the leaves
perking up their ears,
fail to grasp it!

Though wind
repeated it,
again and again,
leaves vacuously
rustled, remained silent.

The waves in a
spectacular pattern,
respond to wind,
desperately trying
to grab the truth.

Sitting on the shore,
between blue sea
and mountain peaks,
observing the grand play enchanting,
he feels excluded,
from this conversation,
that remains obscure;
unconsummated
between the wind and the waves.

"The meaning is right here,
but one hardly
gets it, unless
desire to attain it is overpowering"
in tears, she said
exasperated, not able to go beyond the shore.

"we are like waves and leaves,
give it a miss, get confused,
vision of ultimate truth is the crux,
unless the eyes are opened,
filled with light, one fails, has to repeat"
he replied, like one tasted failure many times.

"you've blindfolded
your eyes, willingly
and complain;
be patient
work on your
inner world,
let the light drive  away the night"
the master smiled as he said.

"Roaring wind and waves
fire, earth and space,
the secrets they hold
are within the inner world"

At the end of narrow path
is the placid pond
where water is still:
truth absolute is reflected.

**"Life after life,
one walks round and round
seeking that blue stillness,
where one would
see one's true self reflected,
when the moment arrives."