Kanheri

 

 Hot summer’s day in Kanheri –

By the time

I have scaled the hills,

The unforgiving sun

Has desiccated me.

Empty Frooti bottle in hand,

I collapse

Under the giant Buddha

Blessing all who pilgrim here

 

Weekday emptiness -

Except for a few langurs

The world is in emptied isolation.

And I nestle under

The Buddha’s grace

When a strange dream

Of enlightenment commences:

 

I have been transported in time-

An artist, a sculptor

Chiselling out life

From the basalt rocks

Of the Deccan traps

I have brought the same Buddha to life

 

Krishnagiri thrives

With ascetic monks

Overlooking the bustling Sopara

That talks to the farthest western lands.

Finally, the Buddha is alive

Towering, sublime

But the artist’s joy evades me.

 

Why do you grieve? He asks

And I, both observer and actor speak –

So many years of burnt-out pain

But how long will you survive?

How long will you shelter

The islands of heaven?

Even if you do,

Will posterity look back and wonder

Who was it who made it all?

 

His Silence,

Then the Enlighted One whispers

This dedication –

Is it for you or me?

These blisters –

Were they for today or tomorrow?

It was clear

I was still the Artist

Not the Abbot

Needing many more lifetimes of refinement

 

My silence

Answered his questions.

But He smiles,

‘Do you want to see

The distant future?

Many years from now –

Exactly here, you and me?

 

Why not?  I nodded

Assiduously, shamelessly

His fingers twitched,

Granted!

Man made the God

Then God made the Man,

Both trapped in a cycle

That never existed

 

I wake up from my reverie

Hot noon in midday Mumbai

At Kanheri

Under the peaceful gaze of the Buddha

Petrified at the realisation

I was here millennia back

I was the One who breathed life

Into these rocks

Now all revealed,

From a dream unto the past…

 

Or is it

A dream into the future?

Where I get the answers

I asked -

The creator’s right of his creation

 

I cannot wake from my dream

I am caught in the subconsciousness

Where reality and dreams

Meddle with each other –

Am I the past, dreaming of the future?

Or am I the future, revealing the past?

 

The visions swirl,

Timelines collide

I am stretched –

In the drugged dreams of dwindling despair

I can see only one constant –

The Buddha smiling

Showing enlightenment to undeserving souls

Way ahead of their time

Hot summer’s day in Kanheri –

Where a strange dream

Of enlightenment continues

That never began…

 

10^th December 2025