Love

A stream of benediction that flows without pause:
That gives of itself without conditions or cause;
For the lowliest of beings it evens all odds:
And elevates humans to the level of the gods.
It brings beauty to the world; it makes the heart sing:
No wonder, they say, ‘Love is a many-splendoured thing’!

Sunday Morning …

Sunday morning, the city sleeps in
And blessed silence abounds,
Softly tempered by the hush of a breeze
And Nature’s soothing sounds.

The fluttering fronds of potted ferns,
The restless rustling trees,
The orchestra of the warbling birds,
The buzzing busy bees.

The parrots come to peck the grain,
Gazing with benevolent eyes;
The mynahs quietly wait their turn,
The crow, impatient, cries.

The koel’s melody casts a thrall
From its perch in the mango tree,
While ‘neath the largestronium
A peacock strolls majestically.

But all too soon, the humans stir:
The enchantment fades away;
I’ll be back another Sunday morn
When the magic again holds sway.

अमलतास की छाँव में

कच्ची पीली पंखुडियों से
हरी मुलायम पल्लवियों से
छनी भोर की धूप नरम सी,
छू जाती मन को मरहम सी.

अमलतास की मधुर छाँव में
मन की कुछ उन्मत्त उड़ानें;
याद आये कुछ स्वरणिम सपने,
उम्मीदों के ताने बाने.

आज छिटक कर कहती कलियाँ:
भूल भी जा अब टीस पुरानी;
कलम उठा जीवन अनुभव की,
लिख फिर से इक नयी कहानी.

Indian Monsoon

(Published in the ‘Exploring English’ series of textbooks by HarperCollins India)

Swirling grey clouds across the sky,

Rumbling, grumbling, ready to burst;

Tumbling, fumbling like eager children,

Pushing, shoving, to get there first.

*****

Dodging around the mountain peaks,

Trailing misty fingers across the slopes;

Racing to reach the valleys below

To dress them up in fresh green clothes.

*****

And then, from there, they rush onwards

To the dried, musty, thirsty plains;

Announce themselves with thunderclaps

And quench their Summer thirst with rains.

*****

Bringing the brooks to babbling life,

Making the streams spill over with glee;

Ripening the crops with nectar drops:

Reviving the world miraculously.

Traffic

Traffic snarls:

And so do we,

Caught in its toils:

Like little rats trapped

In a serpent’s coils.

****

Imprisoned in monsters of red, green, orange

Just ready to explode from hurry and worry;

While goods ‘n’ materials rush hither ‘n’ thither,

All making haste, all trying to scurry.

****

Rows of cars lined up end to end,

Stretching as far as the eye can see;

With rickshaws, carts, ‘tempos’, trucks ‘n’ buses

Thrown in, just to break the monotony.

****

In the midst of this bickering, barricaded blockage,

Running the gauntlet of the giants holding sway,

Miniscule rivulets of intrepid two-wheelers

Quietly wend their unobtrusive way.

****

While construction cranes, cement mixers, dumpers:

All feeding the cluttered, congested skyline,

Add their mite to the mindless, mind-numbing din:

The lament of an ancient city that was once divine!

****

In the Park

For the past year, under the neem tree in the park

He sits from early morning to after dark.

This monsoon he turned all of twelve years old;

At first, a little scared, but now growing bold;

Minding his two year old baby brother

All day as his young, widowed mother

Cleans and scrubs in others’ homes for their food;

Eking out a precarious livelihood.

For, if they want the family roof over their head,

They need to go out and earn their bread

While his three little sisters slave and sweat

At home to be part of the family set.

All of them taken out of school:

Their sharp brains slowly turning to wool.

***********

His mother says, Ramu is his name:

Called after Lord Rama of stupendous fame.

Day after day in the neem’s cool shade,

Making friends with all the household servants and maids,

He’s learning to lash out, defend and abuse;

To pilfer and bully, to give a glib excuse.

For the past year Life’s been teaching him

A set of lessons both sharp and grim:

That there’s no one near or dear enough

Who’ll pull with you when the going gets tough;

That it’s each for himself: let the most aggressive win,

And softness or weakness is the deadliest sin;

That rules are for fools when Life is so fraught,

And a deed becomes a crime only if one is caught.

******************

He’s now a public menace, to his mother’s grief and shock;

Fresh offences each day, while the baby runs amok.

Today he’s under the neem again, with dislocated jaw,

Covered with welts and bruises, as they all beat him raw.

For the once-shy Ramu has learnt lessons untold;

And today he tried to molest a seven year-old.

She screamed loud and long: they all rallied around

And in their outrage, began to kick and pound.

He sits there glowering, glaring resentfully through his pain

As his mother is warned: this shouldn’t happen again.

She tries to bring home the enormity of his crime:

He says he’ll jolly well make sure he isn’t caught next time.

The Ramus in their millions, might be underage in name,

But grow fangs before time and are serpents all the same …

******************

Jungle

December last

My yet-to-be-thirteen-year old asked,

“Do we HAVE to live here?

In this country? Forever?”

“OUR country,”

I corrected her mechanically,

Although my heart

Was not in it.

******

“Why?”

Her question took me back

To my childhood, my youth,

When friends dreamt of ‘foreign jobs’

And ‘domestic-minded’ ones

Of NRI husbands.

And I was the exception;

Full of ideas from books:

Of social conscience;

Of sticking by my motherland

When everyone disdained her;

Of living with my ‘natural identity’

In the ordinary land of my birth,

Rather than as an outsider

In another’s Fairyland.

I had fairly simple needs:

I could live happily in my own country.

I didn’t wish for a glittering life

At the cost of my identity.

*********

I never wavered from this viewpoint

Even as they catcalled

When we walked down streets

To the neighbourhood market;

When I wantonly blew my salary on auto rickshaws

To avoid the crowded buses

Full of groping, pinching, lecherous hands;

When I hurried home as darkness fell,

Not daring to look behind me

To see if those stealthy sounds were a stray animal

Or something more sinister;

When I  cycled with all my might

Into an open gate

And hid, with  pounding heart,

Behind a tarpulin in the garage

Till the stalking beast grew tired and went away;

When I kicked and bit

And clawed and stamped, and fell out,

Escaping with just scratches and bruises

From a wrongly labeled bus

Headed for the ‘undesirable’ part of the city.

*******

But today

When my young daughter asks me “Why”,

I have no reasons to give her.

For, the situation today

Is unspeakable; unimaginable.

And my motherland is now a jungle

Overrun with ravening beasts

Who profess devotion to the Divine feminine

But feel entitled to devour and defile

Her living embodiments.

*******

The matter of birthplace and identity

Is now dwarfed

By that of sheer survival;

Of security in broad daylight.

And if my young daughter

And others like her

Feel that their countrymen

Don’t deserve their women;

Can’t wait for an opportunity

To escape their motherland:

I have no words for them.

******

Today

A step has been taken

That might be the first on a path

That may lead to the taming

Of the ravening beasts

Who desecrate my motherland.

******

But as my now-teenager reminds me

(Of what I tell her all the time):

‘Responsibility’ is not just lip service;

It needs to be followed through

All the way

To its conclusion.

*******

And so ….

The divine feminine

In my motherland

Has her fingers crossed …

*******

In the context of the brutal  acts on December 16 2012 in Delhi and the death sentence pronounced for four of the perpetrators on September 13 2013.

Misfit

from my blog Being a Parent:

Sleep light years away from my eyes;

Mom and Dad talk far into the night;

It’s the run-up to R-Day (Report Card, not Republic)

And the truth of my ‘performance’ will come to light.

*******

Whatever my scores, they’ll never be enough:

There’ll always be someone who’s managed ‘more’.

Once again, I’ll shame them in their social circuit:

A blot on their lives that they have to endure.

********

I don’t give a hoot for the ‘coveted’ professions,

For gilt-edged ‘packages’, or the corporate ladder;

I’m a dreamer, a thinker, a freedom-seeking soul,

But telling them this only makes them madder.

*********

Mom,Dad!I don’t want to live off you!

My own path in life I wish to discover;

It might not be what you dreamt for me,

But I wish you’d have faith and support my endeavour.

*********

I know you’re only trying to protect me,

You feel I might regret my choices some day;

But you’re trying to live my life for me:

I wish you’d trust me to live it my way.

*********

Wouldn’t it be better to regret my own choices

Than resent the ones you forced on me?

Don’t you think all of us would be much happier

If you could just accept me,and let me be?

**********

Anger

Words, like thorns

With poisoned tips:

Drawing blood,

Inflicting pain;

The hurt becoming

A blinding rage,

Lashing out, so no one

Dares again.

***

And numberless years

Of lashing out,

Of building fences

With barbed wires;

To preserve, protect,

Or is it imprison

The heart with Anger

Like Hell’s own fires?

***

No space for beauty,

No room for laughter:

A bleak terrain

That stretches wide;

A barren landscape

Of sharp-edged flint:

No place for a smile

Or cheer to abide.

***

What life is this?

What burdens these?

Why carry them,

Weighing down the Soul?

Just shrug them off,

Let Anger go

And Love come in,

To heal, make whole.

***

For, Love can blunt

The sharpest thorns,

Relieve all hurt

And ease all pain;

Make flowers bloom

In arid sands,

And from the heart

All poison drain.

***

Rat Race

Running, running

On and on:

Dodging potholes,

Loops and bends;

Panting, puffing,

Out of breath,

On a road

That never ends.

***

Pausing not

For restful breath,

Gasping, just

About to burst;

Pushing on

Relentlessly

To grab the most;

To get ‘there’ first.

***

Leaving all others

Far behind

To scale the heights,

To ride the crest;

Only to look around

And find

No joy, no peace:

No place to rest.

***