On 2nd Dec 1984
Occurred
World’s worst industrial disaster,
“The Bhopal gas tragedy”
Leaving thousands dead,
Children orphaned and many people with disabilities for life.

Following day,
Cries of help were heard
Amongst the dead,
Lay few children alive
Shone bright, a ray of hope,
Miraculously the deadly effects
Of the gas they could cope.

Taken under the caring wings of an NGO,
With Medical aid administered
And the vital  support to grow.

Amongst the children
There was a girl named Ganga
And a boy named Ravi,
together with other such children,
they grew up,
Finding solace in each other’s
Company.

When reached teenage,
the girls had to be moved in a women’s hostel.
Distanced made them closer to each other,
And, the love grew stronger.

Ganga always dreamt of riding pillion on a bike with Ravi .
Ravi, the crazy boy,
sold his house (compensation by govt.)
And fulfilled her desire,
Often they went for long rides.

In the following years,
The love bloomed,
And
With blessings and love,
their marriage was solemnised
By the NGO.

All the women from the hostel
Joined the wedding ceremony,
Bollywood songs were played loudly,
The Haldi, Sangeet and Mehendi
ceremony made it more lively

On the wedding day,
Ganga attired in traditional weaves
And bridal make up,
A beautiful bride she looked
The hostel warden and her spouse
did her “Kanyadan”.

Fortunate was I to bear
the testimony of the union,
As I stayed in the working women’s hostel then.
Ganga moved in to her house
with Ravi to welcome a life anew.

Mind, like a deciduous forest
has lost all its foliage,
all leaves torn away
by the autumnal blasts

The brain where great schemes were concocted
is now an abyss where spiders sway
It is bare – dismally barren
of all memories – sweet and sour
Like a kite afloat in the boundless sky
moving nowhere, but as the wind directs,
cut out from the past, turned from the present
with the future yet to surge from the abyss
or like serpents intertwining,    
hissing in turmoil within the brain,
unable to sense the gusty blast,
or hear the whispering air,
dead to sounds that disturb,
deaf to songs that soothe,
like a phantom he moves weird,
drifting far away
to a space and time impenetrable  
with nothing to make the mind agog
or depress it to let out a sigh.

Loitering on roads without hurrying feet
with no bliss coming on the way
to run or hasten to embrace
or fear to be missed sore
passing through dark labyrinthine tunnels
forever barred with no exit
churned in oblivion, oblivious of all,
he remains a spectral facsimile
of his onetime self
plummeting into a black hole

The pulse of a heart beat
is all that keeps him alive,  
all else is dead…… !  
with dreary nights ahead
that shall not know another morrow

Silence comes
  from bones
that rot in the Earth
beneath a wet stone
with a carved name
   white as good teeth
in a hard jaw.

Silence is
  a homerun some kid
hit in Tennessee
in 1973 and a father
remembering the ball
  going like a bullet
deep into left center.

Silence is
  a brother grimacing
whispering your name,
through salt
  and tears on his cheeks,
one last time.

Silence, it just is...
  quiet, like pain.