FINALITY

Finality

Preface - Did she lose her love?

Or did she love her loss?

Finality

They are final –

Those in whose impressions we draw the figures of our lives,

Broken, damaged, seared as they are

Consistent in form, discrepant in character –

Their finality rests in our loss of them,

Their loss breeds love,

For none that retained, loved

For none that lost stopped loving.

-    

Hallucinations

 

I am trapped inside an image of you

Lost like a child in a melee,

But there no one around,

Save your image and me.

On the outside you stand

Unaffected, unmoved,

By the growling ocean,

The ominous wind, and me.

I am tired of the lies.

I love you. Where can I run?

I’m caught in the labyrinth of my own thoughts…

But you can’t hear me, can you?

My breath fogs the sheet of glass between us.

My mind fogs your image.

You are on a distant shore.

I am in an eternal glass frame of unrequited love.

On the Return of a Friend

On the Return of a Friend

There are few people for who the heart yearns to see when physical distances increase. This is for one of those people who holds such a special place that her return sparked a feeling of security and well being and pleasure unbound.

Oh the sweet notion

Of the train-in-motion

Beneath stars that shine

A million light years away.

Does the moon descend;

Or is it the heart that yearns

To be closer to one familiar

As bated breath seems to forget

Engagements present and future.

Do you send, dear friend

These gusts of wind

That bring your scent to my heart?

If the pen could express

The proverbial love

Which upon this meeting is felt…

Let Time behold this frame of you

For all the time of parting to come.

For though there be love, memory, reminiscing

There was never a pleasure so profoundly felt

As that of meeting an old friend.

Ma

I cannot say that this poem is based on real events. Perhaps a more apt explanation would be that the scope of the events of my life was stretched slightly farther by my imagination, and by the understanding that these events have brought. So here it is - Ma.

MA

She stood waiting

While the blackness blinded her eyes.

From a distance she heard

The familiar echo of footsteps.

“Ma!” she whispered into the darkness of the alley,

So meekly

That only her mind could hear.

The night of age had engulfed her mother,

Pestilence, her body.

The footsteps stopped.

She thought she heard someone breathe.

She thought she heard her Ma standing beside her

Crying, heaving,

Trying to quiet the storm in her heart,

Still trying to hide her tears.

“Does your throat still hurt, Ma?”

She wanted to ask.

She reached out to touch her mother’s face.

All she caught was thin air.

“Ma…” she called out again

This time, more to the world than herself.

She saw her mother’s face

Perplexed, afraid, determined.

For a few seconds,

No one exhaled.

The vacuum in the air

Seeped into her skin,

Into her heart.

She heard footsteps again,

Going away from her.

In the mental disquiet

She silently heard her mother walk away.

She didn’t call out this time.

She didn’t follow the echo.

She understood.

For seventy five years

Her Ma had walked a path chosen for her.

In death, she must choose her own.

Liar Liar

This is an attempt to experience the pain of another. But the theme of this poem is the lies that people tell us to make money for themselves.

LIAR LIAR

She has not eaten in days

Her body is weak, her mind tense

Heart beat feeble.

But that means nothing to him.

He puts the tube in her mouth –

A first in seventy five years.

He watches the footage of her insides.

Its Cancer in her food pipe.

It has spread.

It may be lethal.

She bends her aged back further

As her daughters translate his lies into vernacular.

The tears that well up in her eyes

Do not flow

Maybe because she thinks its time;

Maybe because her body doesn’t have the strength to cry.

He puts her on the hospital bed

And puts a drip to her arm.

As her body is revitalized,

Her mind spirals into an uncontrollable storm of reverie.

She was a child, not more than nine

As she buried her doll in the fields as sacrifice to the rain gods

To give them rain.

She was the eldest daughter.

She married first.

Her five children.

Her nurtured sons.

Her nurturing daughters.

Their children.

Wet beds.

Tea for her husband

Evening drinks and dinner.

The next few days are a blur.

She hasn’t tasted food in a long time.

The taste of the last vomit still lingers in her mouth.

He comes in

Takes off the drip.

Her daughters take her somewhere.

They put the tube in her mouth again.

She wishes they would stop the torture;

The pain in her body is endless.

Sometimes she wishes it would end;

That the burden of life

The burden of her children has weighed her down too much.

She wants to run around the fields like she did when she was nine.

She thinks of dying in a bed, of cancer

And sleeps – half dreaming, half awake.

They tell her now the cancer hasn’t spread

That she will be fine with radiotherapy.

She is tired,

Underprepared and lost.

She was almost prepared to die.

Maybe she is now too.

What was his name?

Liar Liar.

He almost put her through chemo

Just to pocket the Gandhis.

She forgave him.

But we could not forgive the bastard.

He poisoned her mind

With thoughts of death.

-Sirtaj Kaur

The Storytellers

After much contemplation, I have finally gathered the courage to start my own blog.

I thought it would be appropriate to start with a poem since poetry is the genre that I find the most beautiful of all forms of writing.

THE STORYTELLERS

Perhaps they are magicians,

Like magicians,

They deceive us.

Sensational thrills, unforeseen twists

In the master storyteller’s tale.

“Cash for votes!”

“CBI investigates!”

Or was it Special Investigation Team?

Did I hear “Hasan Ali”?

Aah so many stories knit with one single thread.

Pardon me if I forget sometimes

The intricacies of each tale.

Forgive me if I blashpheme,

But might I compare these storytellers to Vyas?

They possess his dexterity.

(A wiser man may wish they possessed his piety

But who am I to say? Talk is cheap, no?)

For the storytellers, it is a game of Shatranj

Played by the Netas, the Babus

And the occasional Niira Radia.

And the queen on either side -

The invincible Gandhi heir.

I am a pawn, so are you.

But they make us feel like kings (and call it democracy!)

But that’s the art of storytelling isn’t it Miya?

They keep us hooked –

The protagonists emerge unscathed after each (scandal) assault

Much like our much loved Shatrughanji from bollywood.

(I had to add the “ji” you see.

He is in the Lok Sabha.

You didn’t hear?

His excellent acting qualified him to legislate!)

We are hypnotized

By the masterfully crafted illusions.

Freedom is a perception,

Justice, a fantasy.

I know all this,

But then there are more pressing things in life Miya,

Wouldn’t you agree? You are a family man too!

But my favourite part is the draw of lots!

If they call out your name,

You get running water, electricity and education.

And if you’re really lucky,

You get reservation.

But Truth is a prize we’ll never win.

To tell you the truth, Miya

The truth is just Maya.

(And Maya is my wife,

And she is bloody good in bed!)

But I will tell you The Secret,

(Yes, this is better than the book).

I vote for the storyteller who keeps me intrigued till the next election.

If he bores me,

There is always Baba Ramdev to voice my concern,

God bless him.