Confession Hour

Not to have

A picture on the wall,

When you are winking and

peeping through all the slivers

of our existence

and keep coming on stray visits

to drown the present 

and blur it,

of whatever tidings,

with your compassion face.

It is not lonely nights anymore

or silent summer afternoons,

The entire residue of time

is your haunting ground.

Come and go,

as and when you wish.

There is no dearth of tears

or remembrance,

We are ever ready

to open up,

to all your unannounced sojourns,

to  completely throw

ourselves into the avalanches

that the thought of your

unmatchable goodness brings. 

Tears are a river of perennial water, mother, they never dry up.

You come, keep coming,

nobody here

is afraid of pain.

It is only in death

we grow wiser.

Self love is

the abyss of 

eternal forgetfulness

that we fall into,

again and again,

in our apparently vibrant

hours of 

abysmal imbecility.

Love lives

through lives,

new suns

new seasons and graves.

A mother has to die

to get this truth home.

Women

WOMEN

Blossom like flowers

anyway,

in every corner of existence, pronounce your 

presence , blurt out your dreams, and spread that fragrance

smiling  up at the sun 

and the passersby. 

It is inevitable,

that some will take you home and offer to deities,

Some  will hold you in hand,

gaze at you fondly

and be amazed, 

Some others will pluck you off the stem and tear your petals for fun,

and will discard you

and forget.

Some will make garlands of you and put you on pictures

of dead people.

 

Some will throw you down on the ground and will trample upon you, 

Some will put you on their hair until you wilt and wither.

You will be made into a bouquet and will

be given away as a gift sometimes, 

But the best ones will 

cherish you in their gardens 

and will never touch you,

They will delight 

in your existence,

in your just being there,

laughing in glee,

Their hearts fill to the brim

that they grew you

in their garden,and 

You will be allowed to die your own death 

in your own time.

Whatever may be colour of the sky,

whatever may be the strength of the wind,

The rain will touch you softly or ravage you,

still keep blooming

every day, 

every moment,

Flowers as you are;

Assert your existence.

Women:Hues

Women:Hues

When you leave your abode
Of unhappy and sick existence past a life,
That draws blood,
And hollows your being,
Both in body and psyche,
The trees in the backyard fall silent, and the wind stops blowing,
When it rains, it sounds
Like weeping
And the nights smell of death
This is what happens when you die mother.
The house looks like the interiors
of a tomb
and we feel like visitors.

-2-
When diseases hurl themselves
Mercilessly at you,
Sister comes riding the hurricane of love and
Kind vengeance, giving
Pain an anchor to grasp onto,
To ride out of the abyss of
fear and darkness.
An angel and an outlet to
All the bottled up sewerage
Life gathers day in
and day out.

-3-
The limbs
no more support the huge psychotic and
Titanic being inside the patriarch
And the tower of self-passion
Comes crumbling down to
a weak body and two weak legs.
The heart seeks and the mind refuses
To take refuge
With someone.
At this time daughters undeniably assert their presence,
To lend two hands and a big soul
Bursting with the burden of
Gratitude and an aching heart that cries inside
Yet holds the ground
And runs errands
Till the last day of your
Diminishing existence,
With unflinching devotion.

-4-
You are the only creation
That lives a phoenix life,
Burning into ashes every now and then and rising from it again.
You are the one
That breaks into
Fragments, melts into tears
and becomes one again.
You open your wings at will
and close them in love, you
Fly high above the clouds yet come back in the dusk,
to your earth and your earthlings.
You are the forever stream of
Tenderness overflowing the edges
of existence, diligently
home-bound yet branching
out to water life, growth, green pastures and wastelands,
You are the elixir
that bears, holds and sustains
this throbbing, rippling, decaying, and re-growing
Creation of the maker,
from genesis to nemesis.

ou are the cause and you
are the manifestation,
of what all of this earth is,
and all of its weird
and beautiful seasons of transition.

The Haunting

The Haunting

The trees stand undone

laced with winter dust

as the labourers hurry nonchalantly

on the makeshift ladder.

The bus takes people to purposed destinations

jerks and jolts notwithstanding,

The road that gets built and fills the air 

with dust and smoke

will  ever be built,

notwithstanding death and broken nests.

The thoughts linger around

a death and a loss

That gets forgotten in the daily humdrum

only to surface and resurface

in the unprepared moments.

Nobody ever dies of memories,

even of death of a mother.

One lives with that beloved face

haunting the unforeseen skies

where a sun sets in the afternoons

and night stretches late into the morning.

A Birthday Without Mother

Birthdays cease to be special when we are older, much older. This time I recalled how mother used to wish HAPPY BIRTHDAY to everybody by singing over phone or even in person. She had learnt that birthday wishes were to be communicated that way...by singing. And her that one line contained  utmost love a heart can carry, it was love in its purest form. Thousand moments, thousand small little things come to mind when we think of our mothers. We seem to wonder how we are even alive without her. A mother is the most familiar face on earth, ever dearest, ever closest. When we are not lost in the mad rush of life and are sitting alone, that face, those memories haunt us badly. Something revolts inside, something refuses to accept the truth that, that beloved mother is no more.This wistful longing, this pining will stay with us till death may be. And the eyes will always look for her and burst into tears remembering her innumerable love gestures, and the truth will hurt all the more...all the more...irthdays cease to be special when we are older, much older. This time I recalled how mother used to wish HAPPY BIRTHDAY to everybody by singing over phone or even in person. She had learnt that birthday wishes were to be communicated that way...by singing. And her that one line contained  utmost love a heart can carry, it was love in its purest form. Thousand moments, thousand small little things come to mind when we think of our mothers. We seem to wonder how we are even alive without her. A mother is the most familiar face on earth, ever dearest, ever closest. When we are not lost in the mad rush of life and are sitting alone, that face, those memories haunt us badly. Something revolts inside, something refuses to accept the truth that, that beloved mother is no more.This wistful longing, this pining will stay with us till death may be. And the eyes will always look for her and burst into tears remembering her innumerable love gestures, and the truth will hurt all the more...all the more...

Emptiness all the Way



It seems right

to think that forty nine years 

of the life 

mother took as she went away,

the rest only is a slow forward journey towards the obvious

I am only bidding my time

till the that day, that moment.

How did the bull reach the empty

bosom of the river? 

In search of food? 

The journey from high ground

must have been unnerving.

Yet it is there,with downcast face

munching on grass

pretty oblivious to the surroundings.

The purposelessness grows in an uneasy pace

as the days pass by,

The grass on other grounds grows

greener only increasing the dimension

of the empty spaces,

Even a thorough sweeping of the corners of your inmost rooms 

yields nothing but a void.

One should have foreseen 

such days, and kept in readiness, but who bothers to imagine darkness and empty roads

when the sun shines bright

and the sparrows fill the air with their chirping! 

Going Home

When I think of going home

I remember that it is an empty nest

No noise, no familiar voices

waiting for me,

Mother ,for whom I bought oranges and grapes from the bus stop

is not anymore there to feign displeasure and be happy inside.

There is no blabbering of maids,

no familiar sight of two beloved people

watching television and raising their

voices,one over another, no peaceful

random sleeping anymore

aware of usual presence of two 

insomniac souls.

This way,homes empty themselves

This way,life turns a stranger

This way I walk in the rain,

And come back to cry alone

in my loneliness.