I am

a drop

coursing through

the vein of life

lifted, swirled

peaked, troughed

in her flow

a hot ray

finds me

and i evaporate

i watch, i breathe

a cool stone

i seek

where i condense

formed anew…

A dewdrop of love

condenses upon

a cold heart…

A spring of hope

suddenly sprouts

in the desert of despair…

In a moment

a man decides

to die

so another

might live….

A father-husband

saves families

while his own

perishes….

A policeman

chooses death

so a terrorist

might live

and tell the tale….

The darkness

of inhumanity

is illuminated with

a fineness of grace

a deathless determination

a fearless compassion…

This evening

flickers with

a strange restlessness…

Is it the pigeons

fluttering within the roof

the birds

calling

in glossolaliacal tongues

across this valley

Is it the

grey warmth

of the fading sun

that lies heavy

on the

cheery, sunny green

of these unfolding hills?

Is it

the waning energy

of children at play

tiring of their games

in this quiet twilight?

Or is it

the Friend

who went away

who receded

across the mountain

like the sun

after a grey day?

A wanderer

ashen grey

rises from the east

and finds our

emerald green valley…

Shiva, as if

spreads is matted locks

over our quiet world

and descends

from Himalayan heights

to watch

our small stories

our laughable lives…

In this

mountain retreat

we laugh

we love

we eat

we struggle

with roof leaks

and water works

– the taps have too little

the floors too much…

We too dance

the dance of life

a being and becoming

a staying and wandering

In our own way

we keep pace

with the cosmic ascetic

that ashen grey

cloud of a yogi

who sometimes throws

a bolt here

a love there…

I recently returned after three weeks in a small village in the Himalayas. It was so beautiful, and silent, save for natural sounds like birdsong, crickets chirping, the wind blowing through the deodars…

Some photographs:

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…

moon-bowl

Originally uploaded by tapaswini

the moon
reflected in a bowl
half dark
half light…
the story of life?

A painted bowl

a chronicle of life

a micro-earth

its rim, the horizon

its curved insides

the playground

of animals, humans, insects

one turning into another

men growing fangs

and lizard tails

salamanders who love

like you and I

lines, crisscross, zigzag

spirit paths for shamanic flights…

A painted bowl

– a macro-sky

a deep desire

a pit-stomach cry

of earth convulsed

into life,

like this body

fired by breath?

(This poem is inspired by the painted bowled of the Mimbres Indians, who lived in southwest New Mexico until the 12th century.)

Winter’s here. In May, when the earth baked and the sky simmered, we thought we’d never live to see the heat die down. And now it has. The very air feels too cold to breathe. It goes through the nostrils and I can feel it chilling my lungs through and through. At night, for the longest while, the toes and soles of my feet are numb and frozen under my heavy quilt, my razai filled with beaten, fluffy cotton. 

The fingers that tap on the keyboard feel like two twigs, cold and lifeless. 

My mother the zen master is sick of hearing me complain about the cold. “Yesterday it was the heat. Today its the cold. Tomorrow it will be something else. Why don’t you learn to be patient?”

Ah, patience. And the art of surviving the cold. And the heat. And the heartbreak. And the suffering. 

Not just surviving. There’s something more, something else. Finding beauty, perhaps? Or the kernel of heat that lies enclosed within cold, the moment when one stops gritting and tightening against it, and allows it to flow through?