Clouds in the valley...

  I look outside the moving bus As always – the second window seat from the last A bridge of steel floats above Just as days from a distant past   The harbour waters shimmer in blue A luxury cruise has moored nearby This is but a different world Until, I look above and give a sigh   The girders grey warp in time To a different bridge on a river wide Below - dirty city, with waters grey But a home beckons, with maternal pride   Where everyday, I’d cross the bridge On Ganges in but Hooghly’s guise Two bustling worlds on swelling banks Sleepless, sunset or sunrise   A flower market here, a station there, As cranky ferries snake around Where grey waters merge with greyer skies The world bursts forth with a zillion sound   The offices remind of days from the Raj Esplanade’s there, not faraway Strand road’s memory chokes with fumes The city of Joy had so much to say   Only that, we never stayed Long...

  Far beyond these Sisters three Are sistrens many more, So ancient that, we’ve lost a lot Of this old earth and her lore   For, beyond the tourist tales that stop At Katoomba’s vantage scarp, Song-lines start from an older age, And time begins to warp   Taking us to an antique past, When bunyips roamed our land, And thylacines were sketched on rock By the wise melanic hand   The same hand wrote these songs to guide Pilgrims to far-off trails, To scale million miles through desert sands And crumbling hills and vales   And songline paths criss-crossed this land Landmarks on every page, Mental maps for this ancient land Passed down from age to age.   They say, Katoomba’s sisters are the start For a songline to the west, To the Kimberley plains and Pilbara At the far end of this quest Six thousand kilometres in a song To Karijini’s petroglyphs, The land, they say, where it all began The harbour to...

‘Choo, choo’ the engine sounds Here starts the wizened train, ‘Choo. Choo’ again it hums And we’re lost in time again   A cloud of steam engulfs us all, As if a tunnel unto time, Can you smell the burning coal and smoke? Can you feel the sooty grime?   For a hundred years, these engines rolled And hurtled on these hills, Their echoes sound even today Their roar, the valley fills   As Whitton’s dream conquered the Blues, The little colony grew, Engines of steam traversed the land – Earthy, red and new   And tracks of iron forged these hills In these ancient lands, a scar As locomotives sped past zig-zag hills To Katoomba and afar     With changing times, the old gives way For new roads and rails to grow Though plenty clues are to be found If you run a little slow   Of the older times, the Age of Steam When the hills were conquered all, A mural here, a memoir there – Or rolling stock upon ...

  And every time, there’s emptiness I look to the Southern Cross, That, there’s kings as well, by mortals us Staring at their loss   To lose it all, you ever had And move to distant skies Some keep staring with their lonely eyes Others, turn to stars all wise   We struggle all for thousand years Bereft of poor a home, So much we see but its emptiness In the parsecs that we roam   Trishanku stares, He knows it all The passion in these tears, Exiled ‘tween heaven and earth Now for a million years   Were those stars enough? The Universe? Was it worth all left behind? In the nebula of your eternity Was there a truth to find?   I don’t know the starlight you have seen I don’t know what you’d say All I know is from loneliness In the years I’ve been away   That, despite the trials and quests we have Despite the laurels won, Despite the trillions in the Milky Way There is a single sun   ...

I wake up before sunrise- a first in perhaps months. I crawl out of my tent to find the ground wet with dew – outside, beyond the tent lies a black, brooding body of water yet to come alive with the sparkle of light, while the sounds of the animal kingdom are gradually on the rise, signifying the day has already begun. I shiver in the morning cold but somehow make my way to the lake’s edge as the eastern sky begins to illuminate with the promise of the rising sun. It rises slowly from behind the hills bordering Lake Lyell and floods the world with warmth in no time, thawing the vestiges of night. The world is suddenly transformed into a beautiful place – green meadows sprawling all around a sapphire jewel of a lake, cotton candy clouds of mist gambolling on the ground on the other side of the lake, slowly vaporising with the heat of the morn, as galahs, lorikeets, rosellas and black cockatoos chirp around in large numbers. The sky changes colours very quickly from light purple to pink ...

  If you ever walk In midnight rains In the dark Of a no moon night, Remember - I’ll wait behind To show the way In a flicker of little light   No lighthouse it be, Just a flame of lamp To burn through Those hours in black But just enough, To show there is A way for you To turn, and come back   The rains won’t stop, They never do, But if you see behind Perhaps far behind You’ll see the glasses Stained aglow   And a fireplace warmth In your ember mind   If you retrace Your steps and return You’ll find yourself Perfectly dry, Warmed by the flame That finally sleeps From a teardrop lone Left in your eye…   17 th Nov’23          

  There is that happiness, sunlight bright That makes you smiling glad, And then, there is happiness, Filtered through the fractus clouds That only makes you sad.   It was the latter joy I found today Wrapped in a hundred hue, In Spring-filled azaleas And rhododendrons Hid in the Mountains Blue   So many colours in His palette of joy Even white had many a tone And yet, this canvas that comes Once a year Makes this heart to mourn   So much happiness once in a while Is sometimes much to take, That feeling of emptiness when You stumble on a truth and find Everything else is fake   Melancholy hides in that truest joy It bleeds your heart to smile And only in pain You’ll find your peace Once you’ve given up all awhile   It is in that surrender sweet That peace blooms in a million way Some find it in the winter rains, Or in summer’s clouds of indigo Others – in the rhododendrons’ sway   ...