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Pockmarked with
an uncertain joy
this day
dimpled in
all the wrong places
this day
more bitter than
sweet
this day
Its leftovers
tasteless warmed over
A badly baked roti
this day…
A little girl
brushes crumbs
off her skirt
Carefully, patiently
gathers them
in her tiny palm
And squats before
a line of ants
weaving their way through
the single-window room.
Here, take this,
she whispers,
in language
that’s still babytalk
and folds her hands
and bows her head…
The fine hair
on the reeds
the delicate drops
of dew
on the bamboo leaf
the flurry of feathers
on birds’ underbellies
the clouds engaged
in erotic embrace
your eyes
my eyes
all catch
this first light
this first warm kiss
between
earth and sky…
I’ve had enough of anger. Violence and aggression. Others’, mostly, some mine too. I’ve changed newspapers, switched off news channels… nothing seems to work. Somehow, through some silent crevice, some crack somewhere, anger seeps in. Perhaps because I get suckered into watching an ‘award-winning’ film where somebody’s killed every two seconds. Perhaps because I can’t navigate away fast enough from a channel that is showing a mob lynching a hapless ‘thief’. Perhaps because I can’t look away when an angry driver brushes past my car and gesticulates obscenely.
Fruits of anger fill my heart, make it weary. Today I will let things be. Close my doors, switch off, opt out. Perhaps I can find a way. Transform my heart. Unburden it of its bitter harvest. Uncover its pristine original state. Develop fierce compassion. Perhaps then, I could let the world in. Love the mob and the thief, the beauty and the beastliness.
Until then, let me be…
It’s that time of the year again. When we brush the cobwebs off tricolours and our patriotic spirit. “The national anthem is my favourite song. And I get so upset when people don’t stand when it is played,” a starlet gushes. So, does she stand bolt upright and listen to the national anthem every time she wishes to relax? That’s what the rest of us do, you know, listen to our favourite songs when we want to relax.
How do we celebrate the anniversary of our independence as a nation? With tricolour sweets, sarees, bindis, and any other surface that might lend itself to being coloured into saffron, white and green. What does the tricolour mean, what do these colours mean? Who cares? Have fun, yaar. Say cheers with a tricolour mocktail.
If its not the tricolour, its got to be a thin person (child preferably, oh cho chweet!) dressed in a white dhoti, round spectacles and brandishing a long stick. The Mahatma, you see. We have to remember him, at least what he looked like. No problem that we hardly remember what he stood for. He got us independence, right? With Gandhigiri, right? Say cheers to Munnabhai. There’s no Gandhi like Munnabhai! Hey, was that really a ‘m’ocktail?
This year, the din is particularly loud. It’s been 60 glorious years, you see. And look where we are. The biggest democracy, the fastest growing economy, the loudest cheerer of our cricket team, the most wondrous example of secularism…… Everybody say cheers!
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I am no party pooper. I love to toast everything worth toasting. But I do have a problem. And that is with allowing synthetic, garish, filmy displays of patriotism take over an occasion that must lead to some serious soul-searching. At a time when so many people identify themselves with their caste, religion, region and language identities, where do we place the idea of India? What is the direction we would like to move ahead in — a materialistic soul-killing environment destroying focus on commerce and economy, or some sort of a middle ground that is sensitive, compassionate, just?
I know, I know. It’s old fashioned to talk about social justice and such things. But that is the powerful, radical idea on which this nation was built. Isn’t it time to relook at it 60 years on?
I’ll say cheers to that.
A solitary tear
clings to the edge
of my left eye
for the longest while…
until I coax it
onto my finger
and hold it up to light…
Have you ever
seen sorrow
luminous and bright
and pain transformed
to unbearable delight?
If you look long enough
into this magic tree
that’s taken root outside my window
here’s what you will see –
a lattice of leaves
transform mid-morning
into starry sky….
Street sounds,
motorcar horns
become
the musical clip-clop
of a horse…
cruel smoke and smog
filter through
as shape-shifting stardust…
and tears charmed
right out of my eyes
to become
drops of dew, drops of rain
on the leaves’ undersides…
Astronomers, scientists
and all other rationalists
have ruined
celestial love!
By calling it ‘occultation’
and observing it
with telescopes
and other instruments
that measure distances
between the two lovers
– Moon and Venus
they were, last night
drawing close
in slow seduction
until she lay
beneath him, above him
tongues and limbs intertwined
united in love…
Watch, if you will
but with love
and respect
for a sacred amour
Be a voyeur, if you will
But please,
not a data-notching scientist!
Every moment life
also dies
And begins
itself anew…
In this way
we dance…
ever dead
ever new!
Yesterday I heard the song of the humpback whale. It really was musical! In the sense that we human beings understand. It had a particular rhythm and harmony, and there was definitely some conveying of feelings in those series and phrases in whale voice.
Listening to the sounds made by these awesome creatures drew me deep underwater, surrounded by miles and miles of ocean. A primeval dawn, a raw interconnectedness. The beginning of evolution when a flaming earth forces all life undersea. A time rich in potential, when everything is newborn or unborn.
The whales sing to each other, conveying who knows what? Scientists as usual try and reduce everything to survival needs. Oh, it is a mating song, they say. Then, when faced with female whales’ indifference to it, it is identified as some sort of exchange of information between male whales.
Why, I ask. Why cannot it be a way of creating, enabling, inducing, sharing beauty? Why do human beings think beauty and art and intelligence are their sole preserves, and that every other creature, whether it is whales singing or dolphins playing or birds lining their nests with flowers, must do so out of some compulsion to survive, win in the rat race as it were? It is indeed the tyranny of humanity, the apex of anthropomorphism.
In all of this, when humanity’s progress has all but destroyed the earth and its delicate life-networks, I throw in my lot with the whales. Something tells me they’ll be singing into the oceanic dusk long after all of us have vanished in a mushroom cloud. Or a heat haze. Something or the other. We are good at that. Creative, even. Hey, give me the whales’ creativity any day.
