"BEEP BEEP"

Hello I am an sms.

You know what they call-

The Smooth Mumbling Shine

I love to mumble, murmur,

Moan, mutter, and also mediate.

Like bridging gaps and

Filling the vacuums.

Heart to heart, Phone to phone,

Soul to soul.

Whoever said our youngsters

are cold and lack skill verbally !!

Hah! You would be amazed

Of how highly they regard me.

Of my value they pen poems, ballads.

And hail me on the idiot box

Or in newsprint,

Superimposing my invincibility.

Oh, and go ask those distant lovers,

How much they await me…

Night after night, conveying complaints,

Dreams, Hopes, desires all unabashedly.

Ah, this almost makes me blush. Sigh!

So, this is how I mediate. And

This fortune of delivering Shine,

I inherited from my great grandfather:

The Postman. Hope he rests in peace

In his grave of lost, undelivered letters.

What pride would swell in his heart for me

Making the world smaller by the day!

How amazingly I became the catalyst for

The invention of the new “txt lingo”.

‘shrnkin’ all emo talk in2 160 chrctrs’,

I tell you, It is no mean task.

But, sometimes I also Meditate.

In the ‘silent mode’

Only vibrating my soul a little,

About who am I

After all, it is so fashionable

To be ‘existentially damned”.

Thus, I think I am suffering from

The “Mid-life crises”.

But of course I am so much loved,

So much needed by all.

Then why would someone want

To ban me, me of all!

Barb my freedom in this land

Blindfold my Shine in this land,

Fracture my constitution in this land

This land – the furnace of revolt.

Dismiss my existence all in all,

And rub away my traces however frail.

Yes, such a deep crisis to me it is!

They, some of those heartless, tech-less people,

Who oppose “azaadi” – basic freedom,

All that those vengeful demons do

Is kill people and impose Armed Acts,

Acts of inhuman obscenity,

Which disarm me and

Rob me of my only fortune

Of delivering Shine,

Unbound and unobstructed!

How I long to roam in the

Veins of that deranged Valley

From one phone tower to another.

From one heart to another.

Sending across signals of

Intimacy and what not!

I have known of texting carnivores

Devour all sorts of ‘interesting anecdotal’

Jokes about anatomy and the ‘bird n bees’.

How often they have evoked giggles

Frowns, and loud roars of curious laughter.

I have listened to those amateur poets,

When no one else would have dared to,

Impart their fragile craft of words.

To be honest, when I fell in this valley,

I fell straight into Love.

I have known all sorts of people,

Businessmen, housewives,

kids, students, unemployed youth,

Retired elders and lovers blah blah.

But in this Valley, angels reside.

Cooing and echoing their hearts divine.

Somewhere sobbing, sloganeering at other

Shedding streams of tears while

Somewhere Showering trails of stones.

These are people of wonder mysteries.

Their bereavement, their agony and eagerness

To mumble, murmur, mutter, and moan

in the smoothest and the most suave ways,

has been banished and causes heartache.

How can I not mourn then of my exile?

This separation, this abandonment.

Such coldness, such struggles of the land and heart!

I no longer dream, but see gory nightmares…

Of those lovely people asking Agha Shahid Ali

To reinstate the dead Postman out of his grave,

Into the existential Post office.

And in another I saw, young boys and women

Hurl their hearts filled with cold emotion

At the oppressor, again and again,

Conveying in blood all of their sadness..

And then another, in which I get my tongue

Trimmed, sewed, clipped, stomped and burnt

Only to be left as deranged as this Valley.

Able to “beep” but never able to sing of its joys.

Muted, gagged, silenced and hushed

Sobbing still in sleep, awaiting the end of

This long daunting slumber. Maybe

Till dawn breaks and ends this spell,

Mumbling smoothly its Shine into

Every demon of my nightmares.

Dreaming Of Sleep

I decide to defy sleep.
And I decide to defy the caffeine
Gushing in my veins too.
Ah, why must lullabies
Rant in my ears as if bucketing in me
The mystery of this dark night.
My limbs tremble in rest.
They ache to tread further...
Till the eternity of this tunnel.
Oh, I hear trinket bells.
Are they a part of some conspiracy?
Or is it a symphony my earrings sing?
I collapse under the sway of this noise.
It scatters over like fine dust,
And then inhabits itself on the remote
Contours of my awareness.
There is a vital stir,
A rhythmic quiver.
And this dust dances and
Shimmers into gold.
Pronouncing the arrival of eternity,
Bathing in severe yellow,
Shunning away all mysterious vagaries.

DUSK, THE BLUE DUSK

The dusk of your complexion spilled,
over me just like Kohl.
Slow, Silent and Pitch dark.
this Kohl seduced every moan of my eyes...
But tears set you awash,
and yet you manage to linger,
with lost sheen but with a
peaceful hint of presence.
somewhere around the corner,
of my eyes.
these moist wet eyes of mine.
Ah this moisture, these fine dew drops,
on which you walk bare feet.
how blessed its existence is
to roll under and kiss the skin of your soles.
Oh let me be this frivolous drop of dew
And not a mere trickle of a tear
Or the kohl, proud and blackening.
Let my presence not be imposing like them.
But do let my soul wither under your soles.
let me simply loiter like a lost koel in dark.
Under the glowing dusk of your complexion.

SHE IS KASHEER

Years well cradled
Sifted by, like fine flour,
But husk of memories
Manage to stay.

Noon of youth
Arrives in bright gushes,
Looting many coffers
Of sensual calm.

Coyly the fresh wine
Was brewing of
Raw attention.
With eyes, they gulped down
Lusciously.

The roles of purity and honour
Were cast soon,
“the twigs must bend to carry
Its heavy fruit.”

Like curly locks
Haggle with dry combs,
Relentlessly innocence
Combats stern vigilance.

Sullen fears bind all
Spirits here, for tyranny
was heritage and traitors
were visitors.

Ritually, the nonchalant
Seductress spins the yarn
Only to be someday
Torn to bits.

This time the termite ate
Into the mighty mountains.
And terrain of her body
Tastes bitter cold.

A perforated soul was
Laid bare, ripped violently
At several spots, then
Smudged around in newsprint.

They call it “ideology”
On which they breed “brotherhood”.
Two clans of brothers collide.
Earth that weans them,
Cries.

The battered bosom been
Robbed unremittingly,
Surplus hatred hangs heavy,
Coloured as in fire or a
Chiseled marble tombstone.

Of Noses and Civilizations.

http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/amasis1.jpg

The ubiquitous gaze slithers off the arched brow
so meticulously done, yet a disappointment!
Of the crafted hands the beautified face speaks not
Nor the shared pain of womanhood, but of an immediate slant

The enlarged swell that meets the eye at the earliest
seems to alter perceptions vividly.
A mountain, housing two distinctively dark hollow caves
gathers all attentive air up the nasal cavity.

Of sanctions and of sheer disgust, the facial mound discerns all
Of denounced stenches and of glorious scents.
In one cave resides the thick haired righteous morality and
As its neighbor, the blinded ageing law-keeper.

The higher the rise, greater the dignity stacked inside.
And true, poor Sroopnakha’s heart must have bled green.
Lethal the blow must’ve been to have hurt her aroused femininity,
to culminate into an elaborate myth of resplendent beliefs.

Of snorts and of sniffs and of ecstatic smoggy fumes,
The benumbing of nerves and of nauseating dramatic spells,
Repeatedly the device has failed to detect the
of humbling black deaths and mighty winged plagues.

Warm odors travel up slowly, giving texture to desires.
And there, She paints her lover musk, in fragrant imagination
Of sensuous bliss and of awakenings beyond,
Nothing makes monsoons smell so fresh and earthy.

A clownish frown – and a wrinkle too cranky!
A loud toothy laugh – and a droop too low!
Donning myriad characters, neither too far, nor too close,
Such momentary protagonist is our collective Parrot Nose!

Bimla in Ghore Baire

“Frailty thy name is woman”, Shakespeare had said. But the Shakespeare of India, Rabindranath Tagore would beg to differ without aiming to dispel the aesthetics of a woman being petite, frivolous on one hand and the mythical kali swaroopa on the other. Subtle exquisiteness has been the forte of Tagores female protagonists. The social milieu he places his female characters in is predominantly and strictly quite indigenous. They hail from all walks of life and depict a mosaic of grays and greens of femininity. He playfully renders an abstract impression to the “character of women” through his stories.

Ghore Baire (The Home and The World) is one such unhurried but glorious story of Bimla, the beautiful, well kept wife of an educated and modern zamindar, Nikhil. Set in colonial Bengal at the time when tides of transformation swept its cities and villages, both reside in a huge haveli, amidst the clatter of maids and servants. Bimla’s World is this Home she stepped in as young apprehensive bride. Here, Tagore reiterates the enormity of alteration that marriage bestows upon a girl at the threshold of womanhood. Bimla so far has been unaware of the fears and thrills of a free flight. The dungeons of orthodoxy and aristocracy she has stayed in since childhood has conditioned her deeply to accept whatever comes her way. Now, Nikhil is essentially the hero of this story for he believes to love truly and let go fully! He is never rigid to his homely wife but constructive in adding to her assets as a skilful Bimla. He enrols her for piano lessons and tries to adept her in English styles of attire and hairstyles with some assistance of a British helper. She accepts all willingly.

Bimla in her haven is extremely grateful to have a husband ever so caring and loving. She is content but even in this contentment lives a lingering desire, a desire to fulfil what she too knows not, maybe a free flight!? It is this mysterious nature of her being that is out of grasps even for Bimla herself. Probably the pleats of saree she dons everyday meticulously has kept her real self hidden even from herself. She disrobes herself slowly but vehemently in front of Sandip, Nikhil’s so-called political revolutionary, feminist friend. Interestingly Sandip always refers to Bimla as mokhi, Queen Bee – Goddess of the Nationalist Movement, thus eventually instilling in her a sense of novel power and importance. This is when she gets a glimpse of the world outside the portals of her home. Being oblivious to Sandip’s manipulations she blindly mistakes her affliction as love. Here too Tagore never judges her character negatively because this is the first time she is confronted with the question “Who am I?”. And as this existential thought strikes, her journey inwards begins which finally ends with Nikhil waiting for her.

The two dimensions of time and space in which the story has been woven is no doubt of the pre-independence era but it hasn’t lost its relevance even today. Through this story of Bimla, I could strongly personify Nikhil, as the free, pious, thoughtful, pure human love filled heart, the Home for Bimla. And Sandip on the other hand as the crude, futile, luring, pseudo-humanist, hypocrite world which Bimla tastes and chooses against eventually for her good hearts sake.

INSIDE

The blazing pupil of her eye, Contracting- Expanding
Souls of two boats of the river,
And she crouching over, knitting or sewing.
those boats are now into saline waters, sinking.
Her koo-koo voice is now dry and hoarse,
On which once floated lullabies galore.
Her tendril fingers used to brush through
My hair and doze me off to an addictive calm.
Now, life escapes these hands. Its fingers
Recline extraordinarily entangled in her lap.
The pallu I once pulled and hid behind,
He ripped that apart, the animal.
The bosom that’s was pillow to my dreams,
He rubbed it grim, the traitor.
The moon she used to be, is no more.

What occupies her thoughts is my cause of anguish
For once she occupied me in her cosmic womb.
She has seen me change,
“Metamorphose onto a bug”
As I saw her amended, become diminutive.
Elaborate pain hugs me to see he pale pallu now,
Her bosom with broken heart,
And still but unresponsive eyes.
She is stoic as I venture into by lanes of anonymity,
Her benign figure bedecked in my memory of odds.

Unhurriedly, each day passes and time grows
Into years of inappropriate events.
And blaring silence of hers continues to drill
Commotion into me.
The Hussshhh. . . hisses and crawls
Not like a snake but worms,
As slimy as the insides of my brain, and intestines.
The Hussshhh. . . of hers assaults and takes over me.
I, bequeathed with void, make haste to discharge
The degenerative fluids, all in hushed moans.

Abrupt noise dismantles the silent guild I haunt.
But oh! There, I hear laughter daunt,
Coming closer and closer
Stimulating me to degenerate
To rip, to rub and to terminate.
This woman is not my mute mother.
But her noise bleeds my ears
And seeps like acid into my slimy brain,
The rotten but moist walnut!

I take possession of her and she stops.
And then scatters into screams.
Oh! This noise shakes my contained bugs of turbulence.
Arousing me to extremes
Turning silence into violence,
Turning a corpse into a beast.
The earthy brown pupil of hers meets mine, the blinded ones.
They expand-contract too, but in flustered terror.
I feel her bosom, thundering against mine.
Her fear felt familiar.

Her petite being trembled like
The shriveling moon, among the deceptive clouds.
But she is not mute,
Neither was the koo-koo once.