CaVe...

My first impression of the cave was sand. It spread heavily, almost touching the low ceiling. The sand was amply mixed with tiny white-blue pebbles and it dotted infinitely wherever your gaze met. The spread appeared as though stuck in time, perhaps put to halt at one of its striking moments. The spread now stood afloat, or arched or dead stagnant across every nook and corner of the caves. It was a graveyard.

Resting my back on the ever adjusting sand I remember staring above. The cave ceiling was spread and spotted with jutting pebbles face down. The clear remains of a wash over flood. The daylight spread from a small crevice across the wall above me, lighting the presence of a thousand caves. I could feel warmth and solace. I fell asleep dreaming about my mother working in her kitchen garden.

 

When I woke up I felt crunched. The ceiling was now just a foot away from my face. The sand was cold to the bones and very unwelcome. The flood was silent and now the place was very different and suffocating. I tried stretching my hand to dig out the wall. It was hard and heavy with all the weight of earth. I was desperately searching for the small crevice across the wall when I woke up from my dream.

Early Birds...

 

The early morning crowd will remain different from the rest. Rarely families together. Mostly young and old people start out with the simple purpose of being active in life. The peaceful morning offers a profound sense of awareness.  The sights are expressive. A rickshaw puller starts his day paddling away in search of work. A sick person tries to get back in shape. Old people observe and grasp what finally matters from life. Our daily existence within the plethora of race and creed gets a super juxtaposition when the day later turns into a very hot and turbulently noisy affair. 

The feline in a desert some continents away has to hurry for a meal to feed her cubs. Before it gets too dangerous and unbearably hot outside. Life is ruthless there but again universally upon every species anywhere life exist. 

At home its strange when you find yourself sane when you are alone. Much relieved to stay out from the crowd for once. Like in a good sleep. 

The Park ...

 

Were we holding hands while sitting on the bench? I don't remember. The two of us were staring at the lamp post that stood upon a well trimmed grassy mound. The light shone brilliantly sparkling the grass and the moths swirled in excitement flickering the light bulb with their fragile wings.  I looked above. The stars seemed very distant to me from the usual closeness of foothills back-home. I told her so. 

The people in the park were mostly there in search of cool temperature and free space. We talked to each other about that. The oppressing heat of Indian summer made things impossible for anyone to venture out during the day. The children were now happy to play and yell at one another. We both had a hearty laugh recalling how both of us had been rolling sideways down the mound like crazy stupid children when there
was less crowd. An old couple had now occupied that space. That was our favorite spot in the park. She remarked about my brother pointing out that love between siblings were rooted in childhood. We stared at the children playing for a long time. 

I remembered, it was a nice feeling to come together this far with her in a crowded city of millions. A city where millions thronged to change their destiny every single day. We were here for the same reason and more. More because we wanted everything in life together and didn't quite like the idea of separation. We had survived the city but the idea was sipping gradually that it was not enough. There was an air of uncertainty regarding our best laid plans. So we talked about our ambitions and returned to our flat with an exasperated look on our faces. Worried with the thought of how can a single person make a difference in a sea of able millions?

To make a difference you are required to take many journeys. Journeys are important because they take long teaching you many things in life. Like beautiful memories that stay rooted in your heart even if you never see that person again.

Heaven Below...

 

Day

The low hanging mist over the tea bushed hills seemed like a  damp-breath on a window pane. The dissipating fog revealed a miniature mute-traffic far below. The meandering highway in great haste. The distant noise with each rise of the hills grew faint and occasionally loud car horns reached feebly. I gazed at my boots lying upon a stout bare root of the old banyan tree.
 

It always seemed like an unfinished portrait of a hill to me. This solitary old tree had always captured my attention from the earliest days I can remember. I have been left staring at this tree across fleeting seasons over a good decade of time. So on this parched day I walked uphill to settle the miles for once. The shade covered my back as I kept watching the panoramic view of the great plains with countless foothills ascending towards me. It felt lighter if not enlightened. I then began to locate my tiny home, the vestibule or the terrace from where I used to stare at this tree. It was difficult to spot my home from this distance amidst the cluster of our tiny village. I tapped the cigarette tighter waiting for the wind to halt and lit it cupping my hands.

Night

The sky was in speckle with tiny crystals over the slumbering village. Soiled and battered prayer flags of yesteryear fluttered hard on the rickety bamboo-pole, each time a gush of wind came to knock it off.  A dull spark of lightening rummaged across the distant horizon followed by dull rumbling of the clouds. I noticed the smoke slithering through my nostrils and spread away before thinning out completely in the cold. The sound of a rumbling truck panned across the adjacent highway below. The gas chocked the fresh cold air. 

Weather change in minutes and soon enough I noticed a thin mist floating like fireflies around my neighbor's burning tungsten. I was gazing at the tiny hut when I felt soft drizzle on my looking glass. The company of a tiny frog perched on a large green leaf now hopped and disappeared seeking refuge under a rock. I flicked my cigarette and rushed into the house. The tin roof muttered aloud and my thoughts joined the conversation.

HoMe...

It has been raining incessantly here, so there's nothing much else to do outside. I like the way the rain patters outside. To look outside and try to grasp the very reason for the creation of so many delicate, fragile and helpless beings in this hostile world. It's inspiring to stare at those delicate petals, plants, tender stems and wild leaves receiving the heavy rain and profound wind so gracefully! I could almost cry watching this beautiful yet  inconsiderate enigmatic life on earth. So ruthless and unbending in its law and yet so potent in providing devine endurance! The rhythmic drumming of incessant raindrops on the tin roof is something that I have always missed miserably whenever I have been away from home. And every time upon my long return from those faraway places, our house and surroundings  have always remained so placid and unchanged. The same silent weather, the same moss laden rocks and tree branches, the same misty weather, the same cry of the crickets and birds, the same moist smell of the freshly mowed weeds and the same haze of fire-smoke hanging lazily at several points in the village below. The best heartening welcome you can ever get when you are tired about everything else in life! There was a time when I used to feel bad seeing my mom and dad getting older on my each subsequent visit. Somehow now I have come to terms with it as I see them getting older gracefully. With my station changed, I now feel mighty lucky in having to spend quality time with them, and the cats and the kittens too. It's a lovely feeling when my adorable tail wagger hops behind me during my walks. It also feels great to greet hello to my old neighbor far across the garden. Sometimes, I gaze at my grandfather lying far below in the nestling hills and I start to think about my childhood memories. Life is beautiful! 

Grassfire...

She sprang on her toes when she saw him coming. It was just the bicycle she saw first on the horizon. Riding behind his back standing, she now saw the earth approaching them as they raced towards the never-ending caving roads with looming tall trees. The serpentine silence sat still with time upon the moss filled boughs. Bursts of citric scent from fresh shrubs hit her nostrils. Stretched legs of low flying cranes brushed the corn leaves as they circled gaily around the swaying crop. She smiled her thanks to this blissful life.

 

Some place near, a pair of succulent teeth nibbled away a shoot of juicy hay. She adored the flying hair of this standing woman on the bicycle. Sitting idly, the woman watched the farmers at work and these lovers riding past her gaze. Her swinging feet brushing away the poor little daisies back and forth all this while. Distant cloud drifted stale smell of burnt wood. On an impulse she hopped from the stray tree trunk. The clayey earth clung to her stealthy pink toes as she began to tread the frescoes laid by the last grass-fire. Sooner, she discovered that she can now count her blessings as millions of sprouting sparkly leaves lay bare before her eyes. The sight made her happy.

NiGhT aNd DaY...

 

Sometimes it's like the terrifying howling night of doom when you imagine there's never going to be tomorrow. But eventually you wake up to find a still day with a crisp blue sky!

PiLgRiM...

 

A defined shadow of square and rectangular frames, potted plants, blocks of clumped curtains and some objects lay still across a warm carpet of a spacious room. A night at rest like a dead clock held the moon and the million stars above against an immobile sky. The moon shone through an array of tall windows illuminating the dark recesses of the room. It revealed two figures of a man and woman asleep, exposing partially their abandoned limbs from the soft blanket. A large rectangular picture frame above the bed reflected the two sprawled bodies on its glass that made the picture itself difficult to decipher in the darkness. The radium of an alarm clock shone brightly at the adjacent bed table where as the either corners of the room lay silhouetted because of the blocks of drawn curtains.

Another moment and the woman all naked slid like silk from the bed and stood tall holding her hair back from her face. She stood still for a moment as though some thoughts crossed fast across her mind, then turned around and hunched low to fumble something on the bed table and after groping what she was looking for toppled forward on her toes towards the window.

A slim figure of a woman with round copious hip added another still shadow on the warm carpet. She stood at ease against the tall window pane dividing her weight just amply right to lean on comfortably. Her pale white body seemed to project a faint bluish glimmer within the frame of the window pane while her slender palm stretched on the glass for support looked like as if she was drawing in all the warmth of the moon light. Her soft breast with the taut nipples squeezed flat against the glass like two peeking face.

Two features stood apart on her oval face that somehow made other features nearly insignificant. She had distinctive multi eye lines on her upper lids mostly broken and yet they held those thin folds sharply rigid. A masterful work of a specialized eye sculptor! However, in spite of the sharpness of the wide eyes her brown eyes had a dreamy effervescence and it seemed quite apt tonight. As for the other feature she had moles aligned straight and adjoined in a starry fashion on her cheeks. Other dark spots strayed elsewhere making a somewhat mystical pattern. Her aquiline nose and slightly parted fulsome lips drew and rent out damp mist on the glass with each heaving of her lungs. She stared at the solitary moon that appeared to shimmer and pour itself with the trapped light. Her thoughts were wistful at thinking if the moon there was aware that she adored his solitary beauty? It was so strong that she almost heard him say ‘I do’ in some unfathomable language.

Her reverie was broken as she noticed something from the corner of her eyes. The clumped bottom of the curtain beside her was moving stealthily on the window sill as if they had their own limbs. The movement was bashfully steady and very minute to notice! She played dead and yet could not escape something unthinkable happening in front of her eyes. She noticed somehow that this curtain was communicating to the curtain of another house in front of her! She could almost feel the curtain there make a shy feminine response to this one beside her. She thought nobody will believe what she noticed right now. For in the first place it was difficult to explain how she could comprehend and grasp that these supposedly man made inanimate objects were lovers? She realized the curtains were playing dead now as if they had heard her thought. She awaited a while and gave up at last pulling herself back a bit to light a thin cigarette.

On second thought she held her cigarette in her mouth and pushed the window open and felt a sudden chill on her body. She realized that her deep reverie had evaded her senses from feeling the growing coldness. Her teeth now chattered a bit but she didn't mind. She stepped out the window and sat on the window sill choosing to cloister herself in the open night. Long drags gave back some warmth inside her and she continued to stare back at the solitary moon and countless twinkling stars. Some of the aligned stars reminded of her moles on her cheeks. The patterns were so similar! She blew smoke kisses at them.

A lonely white cat was prowling near a bush in the garden below and she mewed halfheartedly at the cat without disturbing the silence of the night. The cat just stared back and lurched to the left corner off the bush. She smiled mischievously this time and crawled back into the room rubbing her arms vigorously. She went stealthily back into her bed avoiding her chill body to touch his. Although she couldn't help herself from thinking of shrieking him out with her cold body in the middle of the night and this thought brought about another wicked smile on her face. The warmth of the bed soon cajoled her into profound sleep in spite of her mind recalling the ravishment of the beautiful night and of course the strange discovery of the curtains!  

Sometime later at night the clumped bottoms of the curtains in that spacious room were waltzing cautiously on the window sills, perhaps in their unusual soundless beat of their own. 

GoNe WiTh ThE wInD...

 

 

My mind art a bunch of papers that stray afar with every jolt of the wind. I’ll grow old if I have to gather them, so fly afar and higher still for I would rather delight myself with a child like stupor at the spectacle. Oh! Wind play gentle there and I think you can do much better than this. Let each have their solitary bliss in the pristine aerial silence before they slide down to unknown spots! 

Without You …

 

 

 

(Day)

Your shoes are gone. 
Your bags and towel too.

They leave behind empty prints.

Our thumb wars, your laughter, your gaze
still linger in your bedroom...
They speak out loud at times

and grow distant like fireflies.

I smell your pillow...

and spot two solitary strands of hair...

These two little parts of you cheer my spirit up.

I find you very close for once.

I keep them safe for what… I don’t know?

I smell your jacket too and when I get close to your smell
I wish they never fade.

(Night)

The sky is quiet tonight.

I light my smoke and I hear our whispers.

I rest my back on the same wall by the corner
trying to fill your empty print on the wall.

I recollect our last walk in the lulling streets of the city.

Your silk chocolate, lamp posts, whiff of scented flowers
and our isolated thoughts...

CoLoReD cUpS, bRoKeN cAr AnD eMpTy SkY…

My sister lay sprawled on the floor,

Mounting colored cups.

My brother stupidly innocent,

Pieces out his new car!

I by the windowsill,

Probe the empty sky above.

Time sit's us in that room.

We all are lost in our own thoughts.

Colored cups.

Broken car.
Empty Sky.

WiNdOw…

As I lie down with fleeting thoughts

I don’t realize what lies

Between that beauty over there and myself

It’s like a window I can’t leap from

High and far from that beauty!

Come Night and I see that Beauty

Clad in a calm blue canopy

My imagination takes me to those

Powerful Blue seas and those wild forests!

Purity in abundance!

Flavored with Silence,

It’s so serenely reposeful!

And I am trapped in this man made

Concrete tangle!

I ask myself was I born to experience,

This or that over there?

Where is the runaway route?

I am just tired of these fancy attires

And even funnier customs!

I want to walk in the forest

With a radiant heart

And let loose my senses

To provenience!

In PuRsUiT oF a LaNgUiD aFtErNoOn…

Life can be lonely sometimes.

Sometimes when I long for togetherness,

But that’s only brief;

As my work demand attention.

And while I work to smooth things out,

These longings come again and again!

When I read Fermina Daza.

When I watch her in the movie.

Or pass by a beauty with attractive eyes,

Or get whiffed by the aroma of a woman,

Or chance upon refulgent feet!

I wry think over those post-coital afternoons.

Beside the window, overlooking

Trees, flying crows and dotted lives

Far across the dumb mountain.

The thought of smoking a cigarette

Beside a shapely body;

And the lingering raw fragrance

That burst occasionally from the sheets.

The thought of this woman resting

Her head on my arm,

Her abandon leg above mine,

Her soft hands releasing her clasp

Over mine; with each fall of sleep!

I stub my cigarette

And pick a book to read,

While she snores gracefully.

Softly with a slight part mouth!

I caress the bow of her upturned lip.

More careful not to wake her up!

Her sleep-face unwrap innocence,

I kiss them lightly on her forehead.

Her strayed locks quiver with each

Passing breath…

A waterhole of fresh breath!

I rejoice.

Human activities along with the birds outside

Provide a dull hum.

I feel the epicenter somewhere between

Our distinct heart beats and her graceful snores.

They make some gentle notes; Along with

the dull humming of the afternoon outside!

I read a few lines.

The cigarette plays its charm on my head!

I drop the book dead on the floor

And surrender my eyes to sleep.

Perhaps I will add another note

When I am fast asleep!

CoRd…

 

In the eternal Chase

Of my lonesome indulgence

Amid colored balls

And suspend delight

Void of shrill silence

Brace cubist sensitivity!

Walls bulge and contort

Into bulbous gaseousness

And they twist and distort

Into nebulous apparitions!

A drizzle spray surrounds me

Forming a celestial net

I am bloated out

Beside my elegiac self

And meandering about

I embark from this limbo

Staring at my ghostly self

Tied to a celestial cord!

I am ushered into one

Bizarre cosmic veracity

Of reality and illusion

That berserk harmony

Of hysteria and remote time

In Aphonic Cadence!

My juncture divine

I am more of a spirit

And less of a creature!

I am made to see

The orchestrate connotation

Of phantoms on pyre!

And swelling clouds

Shrouding ancient tombs

With ancient inscriptions!

 

I read them with startling clarity

I know not how? But upon my

Care to touch. The stone turns

A corner revealing another piece!

The entire gamut of stones

Shortly wheeled about in multi-spins!

Defying Time, in a jittery snap

I find I am beside myself!

My transient recollection ebb

While I bloat back into my elegiac self!

TiMe cApSuLe…

It was a heady blend

My rum, your whiskey

In darkness they flickered

Those stray stars overhead

Darkness our refuge!

Our backs on the wall

Our Feet stretched out

Our nearness rest athwart

All for ‘Morrow’s goodbye

Silence our cradle!

Silence employs disquiet

Between two melting hearts

And coy silence broke

With our sporadic swigs

Silence gift people Present!

Next to a beam gone astray

stretched not too far

I watched your feet shine

And watched your ring shine

When it chink the bottle!

I hold you in my arm

Thinking about all the things

going back in time…

Across the sky …

I spot one glittery star!

A gentle wind hit my nostril

carrying your enticing smell

And with every savor breathe

I began to gather them

For morrow and for memory!

Life is a portrait in creation

I color one streak onto yours

You splash one onto mine

I paint a pair of eyes for you

And you affix a tear drop!

I opened my eyes

Faraway dawn splotch

Unveiling sleepy horizon

I watched your closed eyes

Quiver in that faint light

I closed my eyes too

Shut the impending daylight

Rejoined the dance of nimble lips

And kept the gentle flame alight

I bring to a close; OuR TiMe cApSuLe!