Clouds in the valley...

The rains are gone, leaving colours behind - Hues that melancholic clouds couldn’t see As autumn beckons, the plateau now fills: A thousand flowers in a dazed melee   Like a pointillist painting all sprung to life, This wildflower land is splashed in pink, With love like this, you smell, you smile, Then in lost basalt hills, you see and sink   In August’s grace, these lands bring life, Remorse perhaps of the indigo days, Now the winds are filled with pastel hues That rise and ebb in fractal waves   But where will you be when these colours fade? Will you return again with a monsoon sigh? The rains will return, year after year But some parched hearts will perhaps be dry…   Written in memory of the Kaas Plateau in the Satara region that bursts with wildflowers after the monsoons around August

In musty browned pages old, Can you smell the past? A life passing by along, In slow-motion, un-fast   That musky smell that liberates The letters on a page, While one fettered soul finds out Keys to his own cage   In trapped a fragrance of the past, What do you really see? Deep the sleepy, sodden roots Of an empty winter’s tree   There standing in a book stall In a sea of pages pale, Bits of someone else’s life Left hanging in a sale   That smell on College Street is then, Something else you know The petrichor of life itself, Beating, heartbeat slow   A teardrop here, a scribble there A lipstick stain as well A petaled hope forgotten long, Oh, what story would it tell   A number pencilled long ago, What was that raspy voice? Did someone even make that call – Was it a hopeless choice?   Then, to caress that dog-ear That another soul had made, As if, an unknown lover lost That t...

  I saw the movie Peter Pan For the first time just today, One of those childhood memories, The best that I must say   A lovely book was all I had And what joy for me it brought – To sail away to Neverland, With Wendy and the lot   Like children all, I too had dreamt Of pirates in the bay, Mermaids in the green lagoon, And Injuns far away   To fight the nasty pirates all With the lost boys by your side, And in the end, in pixie dust A flying ship to ride   To get a book was treasure all For the kids in back our age, No TV, but your mind was all - And the world grew in a page   The memories came back all today On a weekend evening, My little one had to see something And Pan came ‘pon the screen     The pages from my childhood days, Sprung back to life anew, Tinker, Tiger, Darlings all, Were not the only ones who flew   Yet, deep within, I felt the truth The melancholy th...

  All those wings we couldn’t grow And all those sands we couldn’t sea, Pull us apart, around this circle And land us back to where we couldn’t be And they tug us, tear us, slash our hearts That we fall apart, shredded in our soul And we free fall, free fall all the way Dissipated, though the world sees us whole   Free fall, losing all the masks we had to wear The pilgrimages never made, The unmet people, songs and sounds Free fall, the swirling stars will slowly fade The sun takes back the days of autumn pale The clouds take back the shimmering rain, Two eyes, empty now, get to slowly shed All the stars they can’t contain   No resistance, fall all the way down Bit by bit travelling back, reversing time Looking at the cenotes we didn’t drown All the unworn crowns, our only crime And free fall, down, down, down all the way Break yourself of all you never are One day, a seed will find the earth again And will grow anew, some...

Despite all the steps we take, There will be journeys that were never made Not because of want of shoe or track But because time had never enough said – Never whispered, that we won’t be back Not to that windmill on emerald hill Or those autumn-filled melancholy eyes, When wanton time, it never stood still   That unseen sunrise on an alpine lake Still wakes us on a restless dawn, That temple with Boddhisattva’s eyes still calm us When we want to cry, be reborn That little boat still waits to take us to the coral isle Where the sands are silicate fine, Unspoken lines in the bookstore wait That day, to douse us in our twin sunshine   These paths that we did not tread - Alas, seen only when we cross the bridge of time Eternal companions that will always rise Not because of you or me or anyone’s crime They are the souls that fuel our dreams The songs that guide on a cloudy day The colours that dusk our horizon To take one more step...

These shivering, chilly, hillside nights That mist in winter cold, Often take me back in time, To Lucknow’s days of old The early classes meant the warmth Of the blankets had to wait, The day would pass in page after page The dusk would come by late The nights ran long, with endless reads, So cold the books would mourn With a broken heater in a hostel room Fighting winter lone But the days would turn to weeks and months Time left quickly as it came, When life offers a track to run Who seldom stops to blame? Where came the warmth, I wonder now Was it just the speed of life? Or was there more, beyond the seen In the winters’ edge of knife Was it the warmth of elaichi tea? The salami sandwich strong? That the mess offered till 2 of night (Which even today I long) Or was it in the halogen lamps That fought with a retro light? Or the retired army men all strewn, Awake in every night? Perhaps more than all, it was the strength Of the friends there by your side Each soul in every ...

  This morning, I find I’ve missed sugar in my tea, And yet, there was I, Sipping it happily   What changed, I thought The fog this winter morn? A catharsis? An epiphany? Was I newly born?   But then I found the reason, An old, green shawl of mine, Tattered in many places Now left without a shine   And yet there was warmth In all its memories past, Each thread now a story That will sing, everlast   From the rare Mumbai cold To the days in Karur lost, And then Paris on the other end Draped in winter frost   From an island in the Pacific, Where the Norfolk winds do rage, To the Snowy Mountains white Or Aotearoa on a page   From winters in Lucknow To far the Himachal vales, A Coffee back in Calcutta Oh Just so many wonder tales!   The warmth of the winter shawl Was sweet with memories Transcending all to the cup I held, In the early winter freeze   And the day was ...