time and pace ... a bit more, a bit slow ....

Through the unrest of yesteryears you stood silently over the inoffensive radio conversation, looking out to the silent dell across the wooden frame of a misplaced window; chewing inorganic thoughts of unaccounted wisdom and lackadaisical trust.

Gun down the mild mannered stars looking down from its azure abode where innocence is cheaply available and shared at a princely sum. Trusting them would be fatal. Answers will be at a premium for those who would not be coming back from the milky terrain of un-dwelled universe. Of course questions will be forgotten after three nights of hotbed curfew on roads.

The shadow on that wall is yours. It doesn’t have your physical vigour but I can read that pristine mind; The clearness of vision, the strength of understanding, the precision of thought.

Don’t look at me like that. Yes, I am mindful of what had transpired between us last night. I can still sense your leap from the corner of our room. The rest as they say is history, buried peacefully in my recesses.

You called me a lousy dreamer. That we all are. We all are weaving magical dreams. Its just that the fabric is different and the art copyrighted.

He kept walking promising himself at each step, the state of emotions that he desired. But then discontentment is addictive … one despises it .. grows tired of its capers but some where deep down loves its quarrelsome nature like a man in love with a termagant.

Discontentment is deep rooted in desires. “Desires … Bah!”, he thought. And he kept walking further and further towards the prairie. The beauty bogged him down. The landscape humbled him and he wondered, how could all that was troubling him could have troubled him so much. Inconsequential. And he lighted another pack ….

You wouldn’t know me least of all recognise
O Himalayas but I do,
For as long as I remember reading through
books written about you,
My un-sharpened lanceolate blades of memory
drew grains of inspiration from you.

I look up through the haze of vagabond clouds
across visible horizons
Where you stand tall
through vicissitudes of primal living
I wonder again, would I live that long.

Look at the vast expanse of unbridled sea. Calmness that rests in unhindered existence, far away from human affirmations. Beliefs that are owned and treasured. Confidence that there is co-existence. 

Let me sit back and reflect. For this moment at least.

And as I work through eons of unexplained opinions, malice and prejudice let me regain the calmness of naught, beliefs that are mine and confidence that we will survive. 

Let us not talk. For some time indeed.  

Switch off the lights dear.

31st December 2008. The last day of an extraordinary year. In few hours time an episode of a roller coaster ride will be over.

And all that will be left is nostalgia. All that will remain is the certainty of past. What we will see is a definite place in the history books; What we will remember is an unusual package of love, hate, betrayal .... friendships, bondings, break-ups ...... avulsions and havocs. What we will realise is how real life had presented itself in a garb of weird enchantment.

Tomorrow we will start to gamble again. And if we are courageous enough we will forswear all medial beliefs. We will put wager on the insignificant and evanescent lines of the palmate. Tomorrow we shall take the stage again .... Tomorrow we shall start all over again ...

And for you and me, we take each little step together ....

And in a year's time we would have covered a mile .....

and with a wry shrug of our shoulders
we let the numinous structures
of individual past dissolve
in the whirling smoke
of filtered cigarettes, sitting
on the rocks of Marine Drive,
littered with several old sins,
buried, now proudly rediscovered -
whose fate, ill-fated to have survived
invective reproach of rumour mills.

“man, those were the days”,
classic clichéd terms we used
and within few minutes, antedate
future artificial scenes
that danced the skank
to the reggae of Arabian Sea; and
admiration for time’s ironical gallows
grew with each passing smoke;
life that returned after a long silent void
on way back home: a long evening on road.

wrapped in its arms
this early June,
the sky spinner sits
for long hours on a low baluster
and spins the woolen clouds
onto a spindle, tirelessly -
shaping the moist monsoon;

and like a giggling spring rose,
evident in boundless joys of unaccounted
profits; winds up her trade for this season.

This morning, I learnt from one of my friends back in Mumbai, that first rains of the monsoon had arrived. I felt celebratory even though I am thousands of miles away. I don’t know why. And it is almost futile to seek an explanation because there isn’t any available. All I can say is Mumbai Rains are special.

Monsoon in Mumbai is different, say from Calcutta where when it rains, it does so incessantly. Looking at the skies you can predict whether or not it would rain and most of the time your personal forecast would hit the bulls’ eye. Mumbai skies, during monsoon, are almost perennially covered with clouds, which look extremely inviting. You can feel the air that says it can rain anytime. But then she is temperamental. She would dress up, looking like she is on a rampage to kill someone with her drop dead gorgeous looks and then she might just slump in her chair and decide not to go to the party. Sitting in that chair she would look outside the balcony as if she were lost in her present surroundings. 

In Mumbai you can get caught in the rains at most unexpected times. Even when you don’t see any clouds, and the sky is as clear as a plain white paper on a canvas, it would just take minutes to form a cloud formation and then .. it would simply rain. Its unpredictability is its highlight. And unpredictability is non-monotonous. There is a beauty in random, non-routine but there is also a definite rhyme and rhythm to it. When it rains in Mumbai, it rains poetically. And needless to say, I miss the Mumbai Rains.

strange sensations of the fingertips
stalks dark recesses of hidden caverns
traces stealthy movements
breathes flowing pulses,
stops -
holds -
caresses the bare neck
slowly -
slow steps -
step by step,
fulfillment ...
painlessness …
sheer pain ….

the ruby pendant worn-down
on the empty wrinkled bed sheet;

spurious stains of evening skies
standing alone on busy broadways.