Friends! Remember my camel,
that loafer with a permanent grin?
he's been a-chewing a-ruing, ruminating,
upon the yonder and beyond a-pondering

His reins hang loose, his saddle's dusty
his bit is chewn his blanket's musty
his coat's crusted with the scars of Time
he's forlorn for no real reason or rhyme
he's footloose as ever, he just has to wander
in search of all the oases of the yonder

You should see his gait as he kicks up the clods
when he plods, he plods and plods and plods
and when he saunters, it's quite a canter
he and I, we argue, disagree and banter
I think I'm his master but he thinks otherwise
I wish i could rein him in but i know it's unwise
and so i let him have his wayward ways,
together we tread this crazy maze.


(Just last week I tightened his saddle
and he took me to a land
all-green-and-no-sand
where it rained and sploshed
and we both got sloshed...
when the clouds parted and clear was the sky
he was much younger and so was I
he sprang in the air like a kid newborn
there was spring in the air, I too was airborne
the grass was washed, so was the moss
gone from his hair was all the dross
he stopped grunting, he sang instead,
full of Malayalam thoughts in his head
we went to gaze at elephants
(loved their finery but not their chained legs)
we heard drums in their elements
well into the nights we pranced
in ******* raptures we tranced
and woke up  lazy by mid-afternoons
with heads so hazy and postpartum blues)

He and I, we've had many a fight
o'er who's the one wrong and who's right
he's been calling every oasis a mirage
I say none of them's a camouflage
he's adamant that it's all an illusion
that I'm tripping and under a delusion
I say I hear him bleat like a goat,
I touch his rain-washed mangy coat
I see him, like a ship, heave and sway
I smell him from quite a mile away
yet I ask myself if all this is not Maya,
if even mirages weren't of realms higher.