My barber casually remarks,
"Only that person, for me,
is a customer who
is sitting in the chair,
the one I'm working on.
Rest of them -
waiting, chatting, smoking,
cannot be called anything.
They can sit or
may leave any time
depending on their whims."
I lament,
how truthfully,
how closely
he recognises Life.
Depending on one's idea of struggle,
Life, it seems, is a journey to acquire
cleaner, spacious washrooms -
wherein there are no multiple cheap soap bars
clinging to each other
but soap dispensers.
Wherein the big window that had
half a glass missing
covered with polythene,
displays blinds now.
Wherein the water
brimming inside the bucket
one played with the distorted image of one's arm,
comes out these days in the shape of artificial rain.
Cleaner,
spacious washrooms, however,
have one defect.
No matter how long you bathe in them
they don't cleanse the sores of conscience.
Ideas and thoughts dawn on us now,
not how the great poet once envisioned,
from the mysterious other world.
They, instead, startle us like night raids,
like drones in the sky,
like riots encouraged as negotiations,
like suicide videos in high resolutions,
like diapered adults in sweatshops,
like biometrics in the grave,
like knowledge disseminated as shame,
like television sets in refugee camps,
like stale food disguised as mann-o-salwa
...
all the angels,
the poet should know,
were incinerated by targeted missiles.
In an age of online maps,
I am enthused
when people ask me
for directions.
Otherwise introvert,
while giving directions,
I, however,
make it a point that they
fully grasp the dynamics
of walking to the place,
the mobility of reaching
from multiple perspectives.
First, I make the lanes, bylanes;
corners and turns emerge
through the gestures of my hands,
then, I immerse them
into this invisible space
so that they comprehend
the way, not as streets, or alleys
but as duration.
Given pen and paper,
I would even draw it for them.
Being lost is an underrated talent
no more than giving directions is.
Inside the house,
a cat pretending to scratch all day.
Outside,
a pack of dogs fake-barking
till we move out of sight.
Behind the house,
a congregation of birds
chirping violently.
How sublime and miraculous
is it to realise:
these strays sneaking a look -
assuring themselves,
perhaps to God as well,
that the humans are well-fed.
The sardar watchman, here
in our office,
greets us all in such chaste Arabic
that one can't help but
trace the etymology of the words
'Assalam-u-alaikum'
to Gurmukhi.
Arabic
Urdu
Punjabi
Kashmiri
Who knew
Peace would be gaurded
by so many languages?
that it would be multilingual?
The woman selling bangles
draped in a cheap cotton sari
looked misplaced in their selfie,
clicked just outside the opulent restaurant,
was thence removed from the picture
using the latest editing technology
from an expensive phone.
This generation has set down their markers right:
from eradicating poverty and hunger
they prefer erasing people and
unwanted tan.
That is some progress!
if only of the lowest kind!
As Winter approaches,
the doors and windows
swell with coldness.
Father says,
the wood shivers
due to heightened moisture,
longs for the Forest,
wishes to retain
its original shape,
as when it was that certain
type of Tree.
I can agree on this only:
they creak a lot when moved,
just like Humans in every season
sighing, aching and pining for what?
Who could say?
Remember that old mound
on which we used to
burn bonfires as children?
while ecstatically singing
'Jum Jum Naar
Az Batwaar' -
in early celebrations
of the upcoming Sunday,
and all those ones yet to come?
That mound, I hear, is no more:
is flattened and
on it rests a house.
They say a hearth
stands exactly on
the same spot.
However,
on weekends now
nothing burns there
except happiness.
Ultimately,
tired of wandering,
they manufactured
a Homeland.
But what had actually been done,
they could not foresee.
They had reduced themselves
to a tiny speck, a fleck,
a metal scrap
amongst weapons and machines.
The homeland,
you certainly will realize eventually,
would turn out to be nothing
but a perpetual game -
whenever you'll get time
to slouch yourself towards God
in your holy land
or clasp the Holy Book
in your hands -
this thing, that thing,
something will always fall off -
the guns, the helmet, the bullets
and all you could do is grin.
To breathe as if living
is an art as complex
as surviving.
To survive as if enjoying
is an act as involuntary
as breathing.
In this vicious circle,
those who breathe longer,
think they have survived.
Those who couldn't survive
yearn to breathe longer.
You are a child and have
fallen asleep
in some random corner of the house.
Your father comes,
takes you up delicately in his arms,
to put you in your proper place.
The movement, however,
wakes you up.
But you don't want him to know that.
You love the very act -
the warm arms around,
the tip-toed walk, as if
putting you back into the womb.
You continue to act sleepy,
knowing for sure you
can't ever journey
comfortably than this -
the world within a world.
Half-awake, half-asleep
Half-lie, half-truth -
carelessly oblivious.
