No news

In big nothing, lie many small
curled, quiet, but curious
why nothing? why nothing for so long?
so on…
questions pop out of turn
gunshot replaces voice
boom of busts!
beheaded man becomes
banner of heads forced to bow
how those wretched two-legged ones
who infest our jungles — that could well be spas —
dream of freedom
for states gone to dogs
or dogs having their day
17 cops, countless nobodies
one abducted, one released, one…
too many headcounts too dizzying,
trains stop, lumber back on track
life rolls out like newspaper folio
lucky beasts can’t even read!

A dozen in three years

Longing for a masterpiece we lose everyday pieces that could have shaped our writing, or at least pieced together our jumbled thoughts. For years now—five or little more than that—I have trained myself to indiscipline of not writing in order to mistakenly achieve the higher discipline of writing something “really worthy”.

Some worth that everyday situations — home, road, office… — provide us with at emotional, intellectual and more importantly, moral plane, were not developed into serious thought by me. It’s not that I had to or everybody does, but the force of a situation if not reined in with words is an irrecoverable loss of idea or story for anybody who even wants to come close to the experience of writing.

Being an editor, I assumed that I was in touch with “rewriting” if not writing. How terribly wrong I was! And even having realised it I continue to be slack because in the process of editing I have put myself in a self-styled ‘I know better than the person who has written the copy’ mode. This arrogance, which maybe right mostly if not wrong all the time, cut the natural flow of words to my stream of thoughts. I started editing random thoughts even, so as to arrive at a perfect idea that “deserved” to be keyed in.

Choking for words, ideas and most importantly felicity that free-flowing writing brings started becoming a routine. So much so that it became routine! It was easy getting used to the idea of not writing till the time the idea of writing “something big” was intact in both the conscience and the subconscious. But it takes only a snap to switch any big idea to redundancy. Why make a big deal of being a writer.

My Big Bang was silent and sudden, and yet stretched across an intangible timeline. Don’t know really when I stopped writing or writing stopped me. All I know is that I can still make a start, only if I accept that I cannot — no one can — piece together a masterpiece just like that. And, simply write.

In memorium

Fire wall closes in
speed of wind
thwarts my chance
to run or duck
I am burnt forever

If I were a kangaroo
singeing my feet
on ashes of home
would my child
feel the heat?

This bush got it first
this, soon after
and that, in a flash
those, like dancing girls,
jumped into smoke

The school is closed
children are away,
their houses smell
of burnt flesh
they will not return to either

Sam is a survivor
she drank water
held a hand and sighed
koalas that died are
floating in her memory

(After reading a news report on bushfire in Australia)

Of Mere Being

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

-- Wallace Stevens, 1954

Stevens’ evening had been cluttered with thoughts just before he decided to succumb to the vacuum that horizon so effortlessly stretches. Space and its certain fixtures, he realised a little later, fill in life’s blanks as honestly as poetry does.

‘Of Mere Being’ actually stands ‘at the end of the mind’. The end is the submission, and the mind is the acceptance of that compliance.

Stevens is on the edge of an eventful, perhaps painful day—almost etherized upon a table of bronze distance—which could culminate into branches of answers. But he pins his hope, in the form of gaze, on the setting sun. The rise, he understands, is soon followed by a free fall.

The palm becomes the incubator of his hope where playful sun sings and mimics a bird. The distance—from which Stevens is looking at his gold-feathered bird merrily trapped in branches and not trying to look for meaning—drinks the difference between happiness and unhappiness.

The outer, the foreign, fills the inner, the native. And the mind starts returning inwards from the edge that it stood precariously upon sometime back. The ‘edge of the space’ pushes back the ‘edge of the mind’. Here, a bigger perspective puts a smaller one into frame.

The wind that rustles in the branches, or the thoughts that float by Stevens’ mindscape, can hardly shake the sun’s resolve to go down and ‘the bird's fire-fangled feathers dangle down’.

‘Of Mere Being’ is an evening in the life of an evolving being amidst rotating sun and stationary palm.

The Other Side of Planning

You go to the office
I go to the office

Kids come
..................grow up
................................go away

You go to the office
I go to the office

Bibi

May 11, 2007
10:30pm

Is there a way I can bring my Bibi back to life? Yes, she is still around, I mean her body. About 65 kms away from me as she lies in peace after a tormenting wait for death; I desperately want her to breathe, yet again.
Nani, after all, is not merely stuff stories are made of. She is flesh and blood. She was, I mean. My silent prayer and perhaps that of many others took away what she was clinging on to — the farthest end of time.
Once very punctual, prodding and prim, now child-like for dozens of weeks and reduced to very fair shriveled skin, she had lost the count of memories both happy and sad. For the last eight days in a soul-scorching battle with death rather fear of death, water was the only earthly symbol that appeared to make the cracks of age look erasable from her being. Food meant nothing anymore in this famished existence.
What meant the most was not survival but freedom from claustrophobia in-between life and death; where everything, everybody, every memory alive choked and blocked the way to Mukti. What mukti and how, from whom and why now? Riddle-like Salvation suddenly seemed to have an endless logical elasticity, one which could be stretched directly in proportion with an individual’s capacity of self-assessment.
It was time for God to step in. And He did, silently, when we were not expecting Him but Bibi finally was. At ninety-two, she couldn’t have bargained for more, I reasoned. But Lord had taught me earlier not to decode death. Ever since I have and I am still trying to internalise that instant, accidental, painful or peaceful, death is beyond the bar of category, even age. It has its own level, exalted and life-like in the Kingdom of God. In fact it may not be death at all if we consider what we have gone through to achieve it.
Tomorrow bed-sore ridden body will be consigned to flames. Bibi will soar. And Nani will always remain stuff the best of stories are made of.

Melting moments

In the heat of the day, when senses succumb to both physical and mental shallowness, one should try and allow a breezy thought. This afternoon, when I was pushing myself to office and limping down the staircase out of lethargy, I heard boisterous children (who live in the garage right under the annexe that I have rented) bargaining with their mother (who’s a domestic help with my landlords).
I was surprised to see addition of five new faces to the usual trio (three boys of drastic differences in height, face and conduct). It took me little to guess, still, that the brothers had their cousins over in summer vacation. Two pleasant Kumaoni girls in the gang broke the male monotony.
The children, all between the age group of three to 16, had an ice cream vendor waiting at the end of the driveway, while their mother/aunt did desperate calculations.
I did my time calculation too and was about to drive the vendor out of my way, but instead I shouted for kids: They were around me in a flurry; except the 16-year-old adolescent, who only peeped from the window. “Which one do you want,” I found myself mothering amidst cute cacophony of “chocolate, doodhwali, orange, kulfi”... As the vendor ducked in and pulled out their favourites in scorching heat, I saw each of them darting to their room, shying away to enjoy their group feast in front of me. Of course, one of the boys, about 4 years, did not forget to carry two as his “bhaiya” was waiting inside.
The total was more than I expected! As I paid and drove out of the porch, I could see their mother in the rear view mirror. She looked relieved of one of those day-to-day mathematic burdens. It was a little cost to pay considering that I conveniently forgot to take a pain killer for hours. One must make the most of melting medicines!