Clouds in the valley...

                                                                                        It was upon a garden-tea, I’d spent a few days lone, Me, Kanchenjunga, and The Universe unknown   For hours in my cottage small, I’d stare at spotless skies, The massif draped in white of snow, Unbothered by our lies   And all around, the garden grew In camellia’s waves of green, Winter’s cherry snuck in pink, How colourful had it been!   Perfect was it, excepting for A draft that blew in free, From a slit within a window pane That closed not completely   An ever-present companion, It was all chilling-cold, In silver, hung an icicle Upon my days of gold   You could press the window all you could But the slit would still remain, The perfect views disturbed with...

                                                             The blushing petals are no more, Instead are purple leaves Violet, plum, sangria-hued marvels And this is not even Autumn   The young leaves know They have big shoes to fill Sakura bloomed a week back Stirring madness in the air   But the fronds have learned well, Battle-hardened, they survive The last gusts of winter, Unlike their predecessors   But we, ungrateful spectators Muse on those who go away A year’s worth of amethyst leaves – Yet we seek blossoms that do not stay   The same wind reminds us To return in winter’s emptiness To sing in vacant branches, What we fail to write today…   1 st September, 2024  

                                                                          In just a week’s time The cherry blossoms disintegrate As quickly as they bloomed And Spring has not even started   In the empty cul-de-sac There are no passers-by; No eyes there are to mourn The rite of the falling petals   So much beauty, And no one to smile, or even sigh; Was it worth it, I ask the blushing blooms   As if in response, A wild wind blows – Even more petals chip away In brooding melancholy   And I watch the bees That think not, and move on To flowers that still hang on As a single petal comes and clings to me…   24 th August 2024

  I feel a trifle joy, On being able to cover The entire long beach That is Agonda From an emerald creek Where you dip your toes And feel the call of the ocean – All the way to The rocky wall that separates These sands from Palolem’s next   In between, as I walk, I see hundreds of stories Nestled within The infinity of the silica; Tales of the locals - The oarsmen, the fishermen, Of the koli urchins Who accept unwanted winds of change Only for the flowing coins That come with summer months   And then, there are visitors – Who converge on Agonda’s sands The poets, the philosophers, The artists and the sophists Perhaps no different to drunkards and the druggies; There are budding lovers who giggle With every wave that melts And then, there are broken hearts That hope sunset will colour What their lives couldn’t   We all converge here, Thinking we will take away A fragment of these sands When in re...

Every day, Shyamal would walk by the field And stare up at the row of pines. The last one, in particular That had a stuck-up kite - Black, shiny in plastic, With a pink lotus And a long golden tail As any kid would have yearned But it saddened him, That the kite could not free itself From the gnarly branches of the evil pine ‘Is this what is to be of your purpose?’ And he would think of the trapped munias He had at home, many years ago They dropped in winter’s cage Until Shyamal freed the last Never knowing who felt The greater redemption Days passed by, The kite never earned its freedom, Entrapping the young man too Who looked with forlorn dreamy eyes. Then, the clouds of monsoon rolled in And the small town preferred To stay indoors After the first petrichor The lakes swelled, The fields overflowed The Jacobin cuckoos had long passed by; But in the retreat of monsoon Came a white envelope Asking Shyamal To swap small...

  ‘A man travels the world in search of what he needs and returns home to find it’ I read the above quote in a colourful magazine, and paused to muse upon it. Despite all my travels, the first thought that struck me were not that of my beloved Himalaya or the rain-drenched Sahyadri, not the infinite blues of the Pacific, not even that of Home. My brain perhaps ran faster than my own conscious thinking, and the first thought that flashed was that of Boku - almost glowing with a halo as in the medieval paintings, in absolute peace at Cite Universitaire, our temporary sanctuary in our sojourns to Paris. I had gone back by 15 years and there was no proximal bridge of thoughts that should have led to this (our whatsapp group, as happens with time and distance comes alive once in months); there has been no recent activity for which I should recollect Boku or any of the blokes but such are the vagaries of the mind - It picks up thoughts by intensity and emotion, not by proximity of spac...

  ( Tsundoku - Japanese term for the practice of buying a lot of books and keeping them in a pile because one intends to read them, but have not done so yet)   I stare at The towering pile of books - The only source of joy In my vast empire of penury; Collected like riches - Spices, as if, from all Corners of the Silk Route But I look at them with guilt For while I have travelled To far-off corners in their quest I have not melted in them, I have not dived into their pearly depths Nor have I mined the spectral gems Their black gold In Indian ink. Alas, my sins - For not granting them time, For not collecting once What can be gathered A thousand times   But my unread books Smile back at me Not in angst, With peace rustle, my papyri all ‘The intent of the temple, Lies in every sculpted stone, For who but a dervish Thirsts for his God unknown? The walls of the temple then Also make the shrine The priest is t...