Person of the Year

To the one who endured it all.

Didn't complain.

Sobbed in the crevices of the Soul.

Woke in the middle of the nights

yawning for sleep patterns.

Held beliefs contrary to the popular.

Forgot that the calendar year comes to an end,

because actually it doesn't and understood

Life is a continuous halo sewed

with patchwork of struggles 

so intricately worked upon,

no one seems to notice:

a cloth sold in flea markets.

To the one 

mindful of the fact that

throes of survival are unpoetic

even when recounted at the year-end

to one's own family and friends.

Dissembling

Fingers sponge

the corners of the eyes and

make rivers disappear.

Knuckles persuade the nose

to behave.

Palms desiccate the cheeks -

an extended reluctant smile.

-

Hands speak an elite language

to a makeup laden face

burdened with grief.

Perfume

(for Ovais Ahmad)

He took his time to speak,

which he often does,

unknotting the moments,

to qualify it appropriately

so that

I understand exactly 

what he intended to convey.

petrichor - you know?

something closer to the feeling,

he paused.

The details then -

he bought that

particular perfume,

although expensive,

because its aroma reminded him

of something he couldn't enter

on his own.

Hence, throughout the day,

happily, 

even at night -

he carried his own grave with him

like some personalized pillow,

like crucial documents.

Throughout,

his body was his own grave.

He smelled Human -

spirited and decaying

hic et nunc.

Negotiations

Lost earrings, 

misplaced books,

dying plants in pots -

these things concern her 

considerably.

For them, she weeps 

like a professional mourner.

Meanwhile,

illness - even Death 

are her constant companions.

She negotiates reasonably with them,

calling them comrades

at times.

In other Places

It is drizzling and

you already

are on your way

to meet me

carrying a colourful umbrella

- this happens in 

an imaginary city

where we stay together.

In other places,

where we actually 

act on living,

far away from each other,

reality strikes hard -

like a cloudburst

until it uproots

the ability to love altogether.

Enclosures

The conference table

barges violently into structures 

with all its paraphernalia -

mics and files and gadgets.

Everyone listens carefully, attentively.

If one looks closely

there are even rapporteurs.

The officiating nature is hard to lose.

The only thing now is

to decide the agenda of the ritual.

But that is when the garnished

meal gets served

and everyone 

starts chomping on it like humans

- the usual.

The tables are thumped yet again,

mics erupt in high pitched tones

- wailing.

In this melee,

nobody bothers to hear the vote of thanks

presented by the ever blabbering home loan.

The conference table

barges violently into structures -

wrecks into our homes

as an oaken pestilence.

Interstices

While we pretend 

to understand world affairs,

indulge in 

minting money, 

overthrowing postions,

manipulating data, 

confabulating politics, 

somewhere,

in an unclaimed touristy place,

polar bears roll on ice,

ants laugh at diabetics,

mountain goats defy gravity,

elephants play in mud,

spiders dangle above cleanliness,

pandas rip bamboos apart,

a little child learns cursive alphabets or

discovers the joy of eating ice cream.

Somewhere else, as well

a poet writes a poem,

that nobody

would ever read,

and smiles -

precisely for the same reason.

E Unibus Pluram

When a Politician

Dreams about his sweetheart,
Does he multiply her
Face into a crowd...?
- W. H. Auden

When a Policeman
Dreams about his sweetheart,
Does he inquire her
Of recent behaviour...?

When a Professor
Dreams about his sweetheart,
Does he demote her
to the second author...?

When a Doctor
Dreams about his sweetheart,
Does he diagnose her
In his area of specialization...?

When a Scientist
Dreams about his sweetheart,
Does he patent his
observations about her...?

When a Librarian
Dreams about his sweetheart,
Does he stack her
At arm's length...?

When an Artist
Dreams about his sweetheart,
Does he paint her
Deliberately abstract...?

Or 

are we all,
in various degrees,
Dreamers of the truest kind -
letching for Power.

Screenshot

Countless try

but have failed miserably -

they sit with their

fingers pressed hard at temples

in a peculiar position,

for what seems to them an eternity.

Some even play 

dead to get it right.

There's no concrete evidence.

The screenshot of one's Being

hasn't been captured so far.

Profound is the quantum of one's grief,

perhaps.

Nevertheless,

the fingers ache.

The body snaps and

disfigures.

A Dialogue

If only I were a house bulb,

I would shine brighter.

If only I were a street lamp,

I would shine righter.

If only I were a house bulb,

It wouldn't be an all-nighter.

If only I were a street lamp,

I would cease to be a switch-fighter.

Meanwhile,

streets widen

houses fall.

What remains is but an ignorant commuter.

Pyre

Your bones refused to burn
when we set fire to the flesh
- Agha Shahid Ali, 'Cremation'


...Being the burning type,
he burned properly
at the cremation
- A K Ramanujan, 'Obituary'

. . .

One refuses to burn.
The other,
burns properly, and
in between the two
the world
crackles...

Life is a flight
from cremation 
to obituary,
from obituary to cremation.

At times, you refuse
to be decimated by Words.
On other occasions,
people profusely 
singe you
on the pyre of life.

too stubborn in life
we persist.

A Perceptive Heart

The heart comes with a condition that it must be given away but never sold in its entirety to the near ones.

On the contrary, it must be sold but never given away to any stranger, the condition says.

Moreover, in Love, the heart, the condition emphasizes, must be both given away and sold simultaneously, gradually at regular intervals.

It is however the last condition that complicates the thing further, it says that when one is done performing all this - giving away and selling, it must be returned, obviously not in its original condition, but still intact to the soul and sold finally to one's own body so that one may, at least, die peacefully.

No condition is applicable if one is devoid of heart, however.

About You

The sun was terrific 

and I enjoyed waiting for you,

knowing that you'd come

sooner than later.

The book, an additional comfort.

Life dispenses

few moments like these - 

clear visioned, blissful, content.

Only in retrospection does

one fully appreciate the sun, the waiting

the book - this whole mess of life.

On days, however, when I feel 

too penniless to face a moneyed day,

I snatch some air from that day and

shower it all over myself.

It ruffles my hair

as if you are just beside,

waiting to surprise me

with a greeting that resolves

the entire problem of space-time,

at least for me,

without using any mathematical equations

at all.

A Borges-Chekhov Dimension

 A ‘time-bound’ reading of Jorge Luis Borges’ ‘The Secret Miracle’[1] and Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Bet’[2]

One is a writer in prison, the other is a reader in prison. One is waiting for death, the other for freedom.

 

Borges’ character is a writer/prisoner awaiting his impending death by gunshot with a desire to finish his play before dying, so that he could justify, give meaning to his Life. With a desire to do this, he prays, and God stops time for him: the physical world stops exactly the moment the soldiers are about to shoot. He, thereafter, re-writes, edits, changes the story, characters, condenses the play, to his satisfaction, only to be killed as he is searching for the right epithet. His altered play observes the unity of time, place and action. His life, however, in the hands of he who ‘art the centuries and time itself’, doesn’t believe in these unities. Quite ironically, God provides the writer to observe his literary unities of time while dismantling, fragmenting the same in real time.

 

Chekhov’s character is a reader/prisoner awaiting his impending freedom once he completes fifteen years of his voluntary imprisonment. Unlike Borges’ character, he doesn’t have to pray to God to grant him time: the physical world has already stopped for him. Or, to put it differently, he has voluntarily stopped it for himself. While in prison, he acquires a love for Reading - the classics, history books, adventure stories, religious books etc. His imagination, as the responsible reader of these books, leads him to places - places even unknown to the free minds out there in the world, including the banker himself with whom he has betted in the first place. But after reading almost the entire literature of the World, he develops a disdain for everything – including, quite ironically, money itself. Thereafter, he leaves the confinement of the prison before the stipulated time, hence deliberately breaking the contract. In the face of death, the reader at the end of the story even disparages the books he holds in such high regard.   

 

In both the stories Time is the real protagonist. In Borges’ story, time is halted so that the character can finish his book and thereby give himself the illusion of living beyond the confines of time by carving a piece of Art from this mundane, unartful life. In Chekhov’s story, the prolonged time’s quality is further enriched by the efforts of the reader dabbling into the reservoir of knowledge, thus freeing himself from the confines of the prison-world by indulging in the perusal of literary works. Chekhov predominantly wrote in the realist genre. Borges abhorred social realism. The same trope of Time is being commented upon from two perspectives; one takes recourse to fantasy, the other tries to be as realist as possible. The outcomes vary exceptionally. Despite the differences, it is interesting to note how certain basic themes including, for example, the validity of Art, Time, Individual freedom, God, personal choices, find a common ground in their writings, especially in these two stories. Both the reader and the writer in prison, in times of crises, find recourse in Literature, or, to put it in a larger context, take refuge in ‘the prison-house of language’ itself. 

---

[1] Translated by Andrew Hurley.

[2] Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky.

Untitled

(for Joseph Brodsky)

Birds, here, fly like your whispers.

The sky seems overdrawn with mirth.

Huts, far away, feel like undone stories.

The roads curl like eyelashes.

There are no vehicles of any sort here,

as if everyone has just arrived -

or never left.

Nobody waits for no one here.

The animals seem self-sufficient 

searching something - 

maybe, the word stray.

Both the suns are

dusking farewell to pupils - 

the shrubs, here, weep 

like dewdrops on plastic.

....

I guess I'm dreaming

although I rarely dream

or else, it seems

"It is an early evening in the town of your Memory".

Dog Walking

Life,

like a faithful dog, barks -

drooling excitedly

at each moment.

Meanwhile,

I clutch 

onto the latch of breaths,

petending to be the owner.