Clouds in the valley...

  Pintail, shelduck, shoveller, snipe Godwit, garganey Many more migrant feathers all Whichever way you see   The lesser whistling duck pitches, The tufted duck, it flits, The golden plover forages on The greenshank quietly sits   Freshwater marsh, beds of reed A winter’s wonderland, Has with these visitants turned into A pilgrimage of grand   For Chilka’s lake, Mangalajodi, Has filled with migrant quills, From the Caspian, Baikal, Aral lands And the distant Asian hills   Yet, the greatest wonder in these lands Is not a feathered friend, But Man instead, with selflessness Who has tried to make amend   The same villain who once would kill And poach the birds for food Has been changed in many years To guard these guests for good   The poacher now protects these lands, Like a tribal new age lord, The rogue with blood upon his hands Is now a saviour God But this is just a feeble start A ...

5 am in a summer’s morn - What grace to start the day For, on brooding hostel walls afar A silhouette struts away   A peacock cries to break the day Groggy, I wake anew (I recall telling myself that dawn Such starts be always few)   And for the first in Lucknow’s months, I paid heed to these birds, Not their colours, nor hundred eyes - A shadow, thousand words   Skanda’s mount, what elegance A tail that drapes the world Eyes all rapt on a flight of rare When the feathers all unfurled   I then realised, the school precinct Was a canvas, artsy book Desolate, dusty, yet with hues If you knew which way to look   Here mortals shared the way with birds That glowed with fire and sky, And sang to quell the parched earth Bereft in summer’s dry   When I look back, I wonder now What more we miss each day? The green and turquoise merged, ignored With the black and white and grey   I also wonder ...

I reflect on scarlet skies With embers all ablaze, And stare at ruddy beauty At the end of burnt-out days   Is this what beauty does? It brings out joys inside? Spangles of setting sun And a smile you cannot hide   Until the smile withdraws There’s more that beauty does, Beyond joy, when the Divine comes You doubt all that was   The smile disappears, you feel the touch Of the cosmos and your god You feel the kindle - sans the joy You find your river’s ford   Is this what beauty does? It makes you feel divine? You grow beyond your human role Beyond the yours and mine   Until the spark withdraws There’s even more, as dusk disbands And the ember clouds are all now blanched He who sees now understands That true beauty only makes us sad It makes us yearn and cry The fleeting moment, if really deep Makes us wistful, sigh   It reminds us all we were meant to be But that we go astray, To trap...

    I kayak on the darkest waters I am all alone, here No longer enthralled by mortal company I no longer seem to care   For I am exhausted Tired of my human shell I have come to the farthest edges of earth That, in calm, I silent sail   This freshwater lake So quiet, so full of peace, That the Milky Way seems born now twice So expansive, it does not cease   Beyond the earth, it seems I am gliding here in a sea of stars All around – as above, so below, so many That darkness seems shamefully sparse   Have I escaped, I wonder The weariness of a faraway world? That the universe opens up And all secrets are now unfurled   The stars of time, the threads of space Sail on to us, they happily cheer I row harder and harder still Now, there is not a drop of fear   Until my boat crunches The end of the universe is reached The talcum sands of the lake stare back My kayak and I are beached ...

    Just like childhood, The sparrows seem to have disappeared No garish feathers Nor hues of vanity No kingly size They were just there, Chirpy, tiny, simple – As life should have been Happy with existence alone Holding on, being there   Somewhere perhaps The skies got bigger The wings in search Of stronger convection winds And the sparrows Got lost Disappearing from the tiny roofs The orchard trees Or the cool shadows Of a summer’s day   Cumulous clouds Still grace the blue skies Of eternal summer days Yet, somewhere The sparrows have disappeared Have they turned to The raucous crows The ruthless eagles Or the cooing doves? Bigger, stronger, faster?   Or have they turned To the forever flying birds Who move from land to land In search of tomorrow? Or did they never cross The bridge of time Happy in the bubbles Of yesterday? Were they prescient enough To stay back in their spars...

  Here, in these sandstone walls, You reign without a crown, And you look at us intruder souls With a smug, perhaps a frown   Why does it feel that you are king? Your raptor wings or hearts? While we are made to feel misfits, Unbelonging of these parts   The peregrine falcon’s stare of steel Has a murmur in the seas, It stays above, with wings aloft Motionless in the breeze   No regent, king I need to be, This land flows in my veins, These feathers crafted from herein Red earth and summer’s rains   But it is the wilderness foremost That forms the strongest ties, These fuelled wings reverberate With the land and all its guise   The frothing seas, the hungry waves The winds that sculpt the stone, The timelessness, the ferocity Though each of us is lone   It is this untamed spirit here That brings us all so close Something that you can never know In your human joys and woes   (Thou...

  We had to walk through grimy ways - From a sooty station, in the east, (I wondered how in all that dirt A flock of flames could find a feast) The mucky walks in Sewri’s heart Led to mudflats also pale, But a burst of pink then brought back life To change the script, a different tale   This winter’s weariness comes alive, In a sea of pink, a flamboyance, With flamingos from the Rann, beyond Here to thrive and perch and dance Serene waters, benthic rich It was as if a different place, A city of clamour on one side, A wall of peace upon the bays (Exactly as it was long ago, Heptanesia, in the shimmering seas, Long before these isles were fused An urban jungle, on British lease) I stare for long at the avian plumes, Flamingo, tern, stork and crane - If they could find their flats of peace Who was I to come, complain? Beyond the dust, the dirt and din There's refuge in the city too Lessons from these vagrant hearts ...