CHARULATA

Soft pillows for comfort, a queenly bed to sleep in. Staying awake night after night, traversing continents that seem to have stepped in between her husband and a cup- of- together coffee which once celebrated greater togetherness. Possessive and whimsical like a torrential downpour. Eyes glued to the cell phone screen, ears plugged deep into a silence of a peaceful ocean. Heart, as bustling, busy, thumping, squeezed- like the clothes the washerwomen torture on the ghats of an ancient river. Maybe a deep black below her eye-line- a blue in her heart, some greenery at the sight of your prize not in touch for a week, some grey when he does. Some yellow jaundice in your words, some paleness of the moon every night.

Day Dreaming

Losing my way inside the archives of the British Museum. After concert backstage with Darren Hayes. Black coffee at the table where Auden would sit. A cold night of longing in the Tundra. A Masai ritual and a community dinner. Autumn evening in Vienna. A Christmas Mass in Transylvania. A standing ovation at a poetry reading. Seeing a flash-flood from a hilltop. Sitting by the grave of Ghalib, his couplets in hand, waiting, invoking Assad to rise. Singing the club Anthem at Stamford Bridge. Wind in my hair, Shahid Ali in my veins and Jhelum at my feet. And, hearing an old love say she missed me all these years.

Night-time Sky

Like the silence which greets the news of a death or unexpected joy
A silence pregnant with possibilities,
 A virgin darkness and an attraction of the 'out there',
 Little stars winking from another time.
 The moon, the bored queen of a kingdom of frivolity and mirth,
The vast blackness- 
The blackness of human heart. 
Silence, that which precedes a storm, 
Or that which exists in space 
Between two armies just before the battle trumpet is blown. 
Home to so many dreams, 
so many corridors of better existence. 
Sometimes a fleeting aircraft molests the purity of that void. Sometimes a shooting star crowns its sanctity.
 The stillness, 
The mystery...
Just the pure joy of existing as nothingness.

Random Musings No. 3: Like I Want You

I don't want you from the pages of the poem
I'd write for you.
Or from the black ink,
I scribble your name with.
Nor from coffee vapours 
I sip at night.
You are more,
Much more. 


You are not the raindrops
I let seek refuge on my face.
Not even the bouts of loneliness
I suffer when you are away.
Neither the smell of grass at dawn
You are more,
Much More.

I want to see you like a woman on the streets,
Handbag on one shoulder,
The world on another. 
A strand of your black hair
Running down your face,
Like molten lava
From a newly erupted volcano.

Little beads of sweat on your neck
Goosebumps when i touch your skin
For I want to see a woman with doubts
Frowns on her brows
UN-ironed soul and soiled inners

You are my woman of late nights
And early Mornings.
Of staffroom gossip
Of secret longings.
In sunshine,
On lonely moons.
Woman in a music store
And amongst the tombs.

Random Musing No. 2: RAIN

Incessant rain. Like a nagging child. Like the pricking of the thorns of jealousy. Angry words pouring like a thin film of white all night long. Maybe God's scorn, swear words in thunder and lightning embellishing the abuse of water on earth. Trees assaulted, slums mocked. Some distant Beethoven crawling out of windows- the notes made more poignant, sharp, sad by the rain drops on asbestos, on muddy lanes, on tarpaulin protected beggars. A poet hunting for words rests awhile. The rain and the wind howling outside- like Nature mourning some dire calamity. Add to it, the swaying of the trees and you have souls exposed to a death in the family. A first death, hence sharper pain. Pain...burning, torturing, liberating Pain.

Random Musings No1: WORDS

Writing: As Catharsis. As Righting the wrong and Writing the Wrong. The sound of the nib rubbing and struggling on a virgin sheet. Even the tiki-taka of fingers on the laptop keys, the pitter-patter of the rains. Reigning on uncharted, unclaimed New Lands- Inscribing chronicles of pain, fear, happiness, victory. The sheer pain of living and the joy at the prospect of dying. Words, the armor of the soul, the weapon, the crown, the parting letter all brought together in a harmony reminiscent of a solar eclipse.

Muse in White

On the borders with barbed wires
Stands a girl in white,
Hair flowing, eyes glowing
Little hands, on disputed lands
All morn long my heartache song
She sings and smiles.

So when she smiles and asks,
Is it me? Is it you?
I smile and say,
Such heartbreaks are few
For she on her guard,
With angry glass shards
She twists in my bones.

Cruel woman
Cruel gasoline bonfire
Harsh fences of barbed wire.
Your eyes-- the depth of a mine
Your lips-- ruby red sea line
Let me hold
Your morning dew
Which vanishes with sunlight.

She locks herself
Night and day
Maybe once smitten
Maybe once bitten
Her China jar soul
And a heart of gold
In the trunk she hides.
Time she bides,
As the seeker knocks and goes away.


The Armor of God
She wears all day
For frail is a word
She would hate to say.
The seeker curls,
Her fingers in hers,
Whispers his love in made up verse.



 Her cheeks aflame
Words' fire glows.
The light on her neck
A deep mole shows,
It calls for touch
It calls for thirst.
The seeker when he moved
She knew she was loved. 

To A dirty Woman

Your shops change with twilight
In every lane a new sunlight...
Like red blobs,
On white sheets after an act of love,
The bindi on your forehead burns.

The days I've drowned swirling in wine,
Clink like ice when your lips meet mine,
In your clothes my banknotes brush,
In my veins new rhythms rush,
Naked as hunger in a refugee camp.

I make love to your skin of gold,
Once or twice to your unbathed soul
Someone's weekend off your thighs,
Off your breasts someone's eyes,
Alone in the shower you scrub and rub.

Hello bitch,

This Friday evening,
I'll search for dimes,
In your abandoned mine.
I will tear you,
Not fear you.
With your nails that scratch
My words will match.
My rhyme will go,
To and fro,
Like your naked treasure,
And all my pleasure.
I will drink once done,
Love-- a fugitive on the run.
All night long,
I will play this beat,
For the one who stood,
At the corner street.

For a Woman Across the Seas

You lit up yesterday's gloom,

Warming the hearts of many.

Somewhere from Africa a storm was recalled,

And it slowly coiled itself within me.

Your laughter played hide and seek

Crackling here,

Sparkling there.

Every corner of the room,

Was an open landscape,

Lit up, by flashes of lightning.

Your careless eyes,

Wandered hither,

Rested thither,

Like a traveller in an unknown city.

The Seine slumbered in your cup,

The Danube twirled in mine,

And stories flowed,

Like when old friends assault

The walls of the tavern with their tales.

There was something about you,

The sun refused to go down,

The moon too shy to wake up.

The traffic somehow wasn't loud enough,

The train couldn't wait to enter the platform.

Your skin glowed in the twilight

Like the eyes of a maiden in love,

Or a lost sailor at the sight of land.

Those sudden moments my fingers touched yours,

I knew how the men in the caves

Made fire.

We flew past our ruins,

We drove past our past,

With every tick of the clock

I knew it wouldn't last.

You are the riddle I wouldn't solve,

The poem I wouldn't end.

The morn that wouldn't dawn,

A letter I wouldn't send.

You are the storm I would ride,

Or the secret I would keep.

The bottomless depth I would gauge,

And yet take the leap.

Being with you was

Drinking verses of Khayyam,

Only better.

Tasting the first rain of the monsoon,

Only sweeter.

The Danube rose in revolt,

The Seine slept in peace,

Knowing that a man without a country 

Loved a woman across the seas.

Silence

I love it when you write silence,

In an open field, I go on sowing word-seeds on it,

Crops reaping love,

Teaching a thing or two 

To the once self- assured spring.

Like a marauder upon a hapless tribe,

I script my own story.

I love it when you write silence,

When on a white bed sheet

We act out what we never speak.

Your words rant and pant, but your lips do not move.

Like conversations between the dead

In a graveyard.

Words which wound and make love,

No last twist of the knife,

No kisses raining love.

Just the sheer fulfillment and joy

Of the waves paying their homage to the shores.

These blank spaces that you whisper between us,

A universe or two,

Unpopulated with little towns of

Stars, meteors or comets...

The emptiness of a war ravaged village

And the blank mute stare of anger.

Your silence seeps slowly in my veins

Like serpent smoke rising from burnt houses.

I get to write so much in them,

Make love all day long.

Our clothes fighting with each other on the floor.

I apologize, I demand, I Crave.

Your silence is so fertile,

Even on days when your soul

Is the fisherman praying mid-storm.

And i hold onto every blank

Every sigh,

And i put them on paper.

They weep, laugh, smirk and frown

In blue, black and red.

And when the pages flutter

The winds smacking them for mischief.

Every sinew of your soul

Speaks the symphony of what remains unsaid.

Like the only bird in nighttime forest

Or the first heartache of adolescence.

Your silence...so Loud

So Acute

So Forever.