Day and night

As the flame of the night
Flickers and dies
A steady glow spreads
Permeating through the horizon
Filling each crevice and crack
With that molten golden liquid
Of the day!
When the earth’s bowl
Is full with this honeyed golden fluid
Ripples of events
Dance across the surface
And ebb on the shores of uncertainty
Stay there till the lamp of the night
Casts its luminous glow

Pain

The pain is still green
The pain of her loss
Green at the edges
And greener at the stem
Slowly unfurling
Curled up memories
Pushing through buds of agony
Tendrils of her touch
Are still quivering
Glistening leaflets
Wet with dew of tears
Rooted firmly in the dark moist soil
Of life

The Maestro and his Bride

Through the fertile valley
Through the mighty mountains
Across the galloping river
Through the venerable pines
Reverberates your music
The dance of your strings
Each tiny strum
Brings the Sun closer
To the lips of eager mountains
Each flicker of peace
Makes the stars bloom with radiance
Every sound carves
An intricate pattern on the soul
Waves of awareness
Raise the being
Dust sparkles around you
Forms a silver halo
The cedar of your instrument
Is filled with content
As the evening parts
The night ushers in...
Your eternal bride

*Photo courtesy: Vikrant Chauhan

When mother braided hair...

A comb of memories
Runs across tresses of lifetimes
Tears oil them well...
Nourish them...
Remember those deft strokes
Unlocking each strand
Undoing each knot
Slowly you laboured
Daily, a ritual
A dance of your hands
As they deftly parted
And halved for once
Your hands run
To braid each part
Interlocking lives
Securing tender moments
One cross at a time
Criss cross cross criss
Your pleats grew
Out came a dainty ribbon to adorn
That thick braid
And secure it tightly
To last till eternity

New beginings....

It’s been a long while since I really exercised my rainbow cells (creative grey cells) and my fingers to produce something nice! Life has been moving at an eclectic pace! Falling in love had been common almost! Honestly! But Rising up to meet the love of my life has been once in a lifetime experience!
So many changes and so many stories of changes, full of subtexts and subplots! Well not getting into changes per say! Just the kind of feeling you keep getting that something is changing and in a manner so decisive, gentle and yet so powerful! It seems more like some animation clip in slow motion, unfurling of the mind, blooming of a flower and rise of a star…it’s more like it I think…
I have met different flavors of life, different people and have been close with many as well, more like trying out and enjoying different cuisines of the world! But then I always found something missing in each…today I realize that the missing flavor was of salt! Yes to find the salt of my life was vital…it shall keep me alive longer…its indispensible and so unassuming yet so very essential!
Life still poses challenges, I still anticipate changes in me and my surroundings with same eagerness I cannot really define, but then beyond all that the core of the mind is now at peace, peace of having found peace, the other significant half and peace that there did exist one such half!
It’s lovely to know someone loves you and the works, but it is really lovely to sense that someone is also getting a feeling of being complete when you are around! Where it’s beyond mere give and take, where each encourages the other to take and gently nudges to give…and to do so effortlessly…the beauty lies there, in effortlessness…
Essays on and about love can be many but then capturing the ethos, the essence of that wonderful primal feeling is what matters. I; for once am not competing or struggling to capture the feeling in words. I have learnt that the beauty lies not in possessing but in empowering, fuelling a stellar existence of the other! Complementing than competing and overlapping than stamping out! Existences and their harmonies, the beauty of that harmony now seems so pellucid! The search ends here; I can sit here for ages to listen to the melody created by this harmony, this universal, all consuming harmony.
This piece of text neither seems creative nor effective in portraying what I really wish to say… But then the unsaid bespeaks volumes through the same text…
This is just a mere drop in the ocean of silence around me…am loving and living in silences which speak so much for me that its almost meditative and healing to nurture silence after knowing, learning to speak so many languages and so many times over playing with words and chords of the heart of so many around me….
Now with some clarity and authority I may state that the constant progression towards achieving that one vital link in life ends for me…now on a different take at life and love…

few questions...

You drive down the same road...everyday...

Does my absence come along?

You hear those haunting tunes...

Does my lyric come along?

You traverse familiar contours...

Does my shiver come along?

You live in bright realities....

Does my dreamy shadow tag along???

bloom

As the night burns away,

Ashes of dreams start falling...

Aroma of unfulfilled promises starts spreading...

The window pane shatters,

Fragments of me must prick your gloom,

A rainy night,

My pain is in full bloom...

Wet blue darkness

Your fragrance is melting in this wet blue darkness,

My being touches your memory,

A sliver of mercury slips by,

And darkness wilts forever...

Blooms forth a tear,

With your name,

Hold the inkpot steady,

Least it spills the last drop of emotion,

Leaving my song empty,

Without a haunting end...

Dusty crossroads

Her faint steps on the heated asaphalt

Her missing anklet and cracked heels

Yet she dances in gay abandon…

Whose Radha is she?

What does her Kanha do?

Her innocence is her jewel?

Or some bait hanging for men?

She dances to her own lilting tune…

Did you notice the half lyrics?

Who taught them?

Where are her dreams?

Does she dream of indifference?

Lustful eyes?

Or just pennies?

What is the quest of her being?

Will she ever read the poem of her life?

Or will it always remain a half lyric world for her?

Her tears...

I think I shall write

About her tears

Honest real tears

Salty acrid and burning

Burning with pangs of seperation

Guilt of betrayal 

And burden of loyalty

She wore them well

Like fine refulgent pearls

Strung in pellucid thoughts

Strained across her bosom

Taut and real

She cried for love

She cried for her love

She cried…

I was dazed

By her tears

By her love

And by her

What is the burden

That weighs her down

Makes her cry

And yet she is at peace

How can tears bring peace?

How can betrayal make you calm?

And how can love liberate?

Crisscrossing questions

Play of words

Did I have anything else to offer?

No soothing words

No hands to wipe her tears

No love to match hers

Will you cry for me someday?

Did you do that once for me?

Will there be a poem of our seperation

Will there be words to describe

Our love?

breaking free

That brute force

Those moments shortly before breaking free

Those ramshackles strained..

That last metal giving away…

The gory and heavy memories

They captured me for long

Your every touch had turned lead

Boring through my being

Every poem froze in my eyes

And choked me from within

I knew you were right

You made me feel wrong

You left swiftly

I dragged along…

Love was always the only way

Commitment was your stay

I was free

And you were bound

Solace in each other

I now wonder

How we found..

I have survived

Your venomous seperation

And I am not at all regretting…

The realization that my deeds are blasphemous,

 by itself was emancipating….

I