Short poetry

1. Poetry of the moment
Short Poetry
Nisheedhi

2. Poetry of the moment
Short Poetry
Nisheedhi

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4. Preface
Poetry based upon actual experiences, not one thought up in
the intellectual aridness of a pseudo-thinker. Words as they
mean in the specific context of recollected thought or image ,
not meaning several things at a time but that which re-creates
an aura or a haze of an earlier experience.

5. Contents
The onion seller 1
Re-assembling morning images 2
Tree 3
Evening on the Puri beach 4
The beggar’s joke 5
Looking up at the exquisitely sculpted figures on the 6
Puri temple
Standing before God in the Puri temple 7
Visit to the temple of Avinashi 8
Comparing development models of Singapore and 9
India
Morning images 10
Our dead voices 11
Shopping for wedding saris 12
Garage 13
The boy priest of Lepakshi 14
A train journey in summer 16

6. Eyes 17
On return from the Jagannath temple in Puri 18
Our elephant-God 19
The Body 20
My little pal on the ICQ 21
At the famous Tamil poet Subramania Bharati’s house 23
The Muse 24
The Marble Mausoleum 25
The legend of Sivakasi 26
Death of a woman 27
Skull-pot 28
Dying of excess life 29
Bankura horses 30
The moon 31
Living in space 32
Dream 33
There is defiance in the air 34

7. The 70’s man 35
Marriages 36
The grand plot 37
A doctor’s marriage 38
Memories of the city of Porbandar 39
On completion of the construction of a house 40
The afternoon sounds 41
Our temple priest 42
The pastor and his niece 43
His gods ,my gods 44
The last days of my mother 45
Desires 46
Our time is leaking 47
The last lecture 48
On my mother’s death 49
Thoughts at the Srirangam temple 50
At the memorial forest for the departed 51

8. You , me and him 52
The laughing club 53
A warehouse prince broke her horn 54
The poet stands upright in his pants 55
The memoirs of a Geisha 56
Waiting for the boat 57
What the old trees do not realize 58
Flickr. dreams 59
When death happened of my driver’s father 60
At death ceremony of a relative in Eluru 61
Sunrise and flowers 62
The Wishing Well 63
On a rainy night in Hyderabad 64
Waiting for a flight at Mumbai 65
On failing to get admittance to the Taj Mahal 66
On return from the temple of Puri Jagannath 67
Fear of death 68

9. River noise and river silence 69
The peak in Hong Kong 71
Sitting in the car on a rainy evening in Bhopal 72
Remembering a schizophrenic boss 73
Thoughts on a rainy evening in a Midnapore hotel 74
Looking at a painting entitled “Books” 75
Morning at the Grand Hotel,Kolkata 76
At the temple 77
The rock 78
Prayer 79
Hair cut on a Good Friday 80
Break 81
The wind palace of Jaipur 82
Passing by a tribal weekly fair in Bastar 83
Suicide 84
Dying of love 85
Mankarnika ghat 86

10. Upon the death of a colleague 88
Tribute to the Shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan 89
Remembering a dream on one morning 90
On the tiny hillock in our bank’s staff college in 91
Hyderabad
The royal palace 92
Trying to make poetry from a joke 93
The cherub in inverted spectacles 94
The hanging of a child-rapist 96
In the tea gardens of Coonoor 97
A boat trip on the Ganges in Kolkata 98
Morning at the Palm Hotel, Vizag 99
Photographing the cranes in the Bhopal lake 100
Fire and water 101
Prayer 102
The hill is dead 103
The bride 104

11. The skin 105

12. The onion seller
The onion seller with an old white mustache
Talked sneeringly of others who took onions
Before they were due and ripe under the earth.
Their money grew over the earth, high in the air.
His money grew quietly under the earth’s skin.
His pretty pink onion bulbs ripened in silence.
Sure he knew his onions and they their money
He pontificated under his old white mustache
( A scrap of conversation I overheard in today’s morning walk)
1

13. Re-assembling morning images
At the corner house citrus fruits hung in ripe silence.
Three coconuts went in a huddle and then exchanged
Morning notes with the unwashed house in the breeze.
A man walked as if from the sun holding plastic oil can
Of spilling waters, his other hand balancing the weight.
Another, bound in winter clothes , released bursts of smoke
From his muffler, into the air, his eyes softly closed in joy.
Like the early morning train in the countryside chugging
Quietly as its white smoke rose to the blue mountains.
Re-assembling is making a big deal of everyday events.
2

14. Tree
It had stood there bare and brown and stone dead
And waved in the breeze pretending to be alive.
Evening birds had still been sitting on its branches.
Yesterday it became a mere image in my mind
Two axes did a fine job in the day and from balcony
I now have uninterrupted view of the blue sky.
3

15. Evening on the Puri beach
In the evening we sipped thin milk and tea on the beach.
The sea had been quite calm and collected in thoughts.
An old man sold colorful balloons that went into the sky;
A bare-backed boy quickly backed out from the friendly sea.
The dark in camera allowed no sun pictures in the west.
( Journaling the visit to the Puri sea beach on 15/12/2010)
4

16. The beggar’s joke
A beggar sat there on the brown stone steps latticed with
Dark shadows and patches of light that danced with breeze.
Up there a naked stone saint was waiting to receive us,
Through a maze of monkeys, beggars and tree shadows.
The beggar’s plate shone with absence of coins in the sun
An armless man greeted him warmly in friendly shadows.
From the smirk on his face it must have been a funny joke.
(Looking at a beggar on the steps leading to the temple in Udayagiri
in Bhubaneswar)
5

17. Looking up at the exquisitely sculpted figures on the Puri
temple
We looked up at the browned finish of the temple
Its beauty spilling steadily into eager eye- space
Several nubile stone maidens looked down at us
Their beauty came down to us in machined perfection.
6

18. Standing before God in the Puri temple
Deep in the inner space stood beautiful wooden gods
They looked at us as though they were laughing
Only their eyes refused to close when they laughed
As their glances fell on us ,on our bodies and eyes.
7

19. Visit to the temple of Avinashi
Here, face to face with myth ,
Thro’ the hazy mists of time ,
I see the images of life and death
Of evanescent human existence .
A poet sang his mellifluous
Song of re-generation, of new life .
A boy rose from death’s non-exist’nce
The Lord of Time and Destruction
Restores to the Creator his powers .
Here, both the poet and the Creator
Have regained their creative power
As a crocodile emerges from the lake
Yet another image of life-in-death.
8

20. Comparing development models of Singapore and India
The choice was ‘tween light and lightning-
‘tween Singapore haze and Singrur daze,
Politician –inspired haze , an old man’s
Benign and truly inspiring island growth
And a chubby-cheeked rail woman’s -
That wanted “no- no” car spluttering
Benificently in her Bengal backwoods.
She only spewed Bengali fire notoriously.
There the old man will cut off your hand
For flipping cigarette ash on the roads.
Here “didi” sister thought up rail growth
In numbers crunched in puffed up cheeks
Or was she getting even with communists?
Or with the buffalo man who ran rails like
Cowsheds of haystacks and impressed
Stanford jargon peddlers with cooked up
Success stories padded with half truths.
When you choose development models
A benign haze by a whip cracking old man
Seems easier than a democratic daze
Where you wouldn’t know what hit you.
9

21. Morning images
There the parijat flowers lie on the earth ,
Their faces in the dust, feet to the sky.
Someone’s cut flower creeper still fills
The air with previous night’s fragr’nce.
On the hills ,from a balcony ,a dark woman
Looks down as if expecting the milkman.
There a man is up in arms against the sun.
A w’man froths at mouth with toothpaste.
Words remain,as many scraps of memory.
An image or two vanishes in the wilderness;
Its fragrance stays as unrealized poetry.
10

22. Our dead voices
All our dead voices live in midnight graves;
When the owl hoots and foxes howl at moon
They come all at once in cascade of sound.
Our ears promptly catch them as a single strain
Of autumn leaves flying in the spring breeze.
It is not enough to die from this world and lie.
We have to talk about it , from grave, to sky.
The chorus of our speeches rises to the skies
At night as the wind rustles in the pipal leaves.
Sometimes we speak like the whoosh of feathers
Falling all at once from many flying birds of air
But we speak mostly to ourselves in our nights.
It is not enough to have lived but when we die
We have to talk about it from wher’ver we lie.
(Based upon conversation between Estragon and Vladimir in
“Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Beckett)
11

23. Shopping for wedding saris
The shimmer of color and woven fragrance
Of smooth textiles unwind in electric light
As if they are nights of interminable waiting
Through fold after fold of crisp starlit skies.
12

24. Garage
It is in the garage that I live, all our oils on display
Till a teenager comes rocking my boat in the lake .
The horse that eats apples off my hands is locked.
We both are locked in the poetry of our tragi-comedy.
Our owner-boss says do with the oils as you feel like
As if we have a choice in garage or on the rail track.
Our ‘craic’ beer cans open our life’s can of worms.
Both my apple-eating horse and I are now free, luckily,
On the rail-track and in the lake of pikes respectively.
(On watching the movie “Garage“, a 2007 movie with the engaging
theme of urban alienation)
13

25. The boy priest of Lepakshi
The boy priest’s words flowed
Like the river Penna in monsoon.
He took us gently with his words
Through the dusty corridors of time.
His voice merged imperceptibly
In the temple’s flowing history
As if he was born a creature of then
And arrived here on time’s back.
One afternoon when the harsh sun
Beat down on their bare backs
The sculptors were at their work
Chipping away at their granite
And then it was lunch time and
Mother was not ready with food;
The sculptors chiselled away
At a giant boulder near the temple
And transformed it into a serpent.
His child’s voice floated like
A white cloud in the summer sky
This statuesque woman in stone
Has aquiline nose and lotus eyes
Her waist is narrow, wrists delicate.
Her delicate necklace rose and
Fell on her breasts as she breathed.
14

26. The boy’s haunting voice bridged
The distances in time as a child-God
Looked down on us mischievously
From the mystical frescoes of the roof.
(On a visit to the Lepakshi temple in Andhra Pradesh)
15

27. A train journey in summer
In the pickle jar train coach human bodies
Piled one on other with their body parts scarcely
Distinguishable , their ownership uncertain.
A sweaty body in polyester munched peanuts
Dropping shells on the train floor from the berth.
The boltless bathroom door was open with a view.
Nearby, meal plates with pastes of rice and lentil
Co-existed with gunny sacs of assorted merchandise.
A crippled beggar boy mopped the train floor
Tickling your under-feet for a few reluctant coins.
Three eunuchs beat the air between their palms
And jabbed their fingers at you for health and welfare.
A black-coated railwayman moved through bodies
Surrounded by eager money-wet berth-seekers
As if he was a moving lantern with a halo of moths.
A tongue-lashing matronly woman plonked on the seat
Stretching her arthritic limbs offensively on all sides.
A Gujarati family promptly opened tall biscuit tins
Of hard puris and hot pickle to sate children’s hunger.
Three wholesalers from Nagpur squatted on the floor
With a pack of playing cards spread out on a towel .
A mango-onion bhel seller dispensed his wares
On one foot delicately balanced in the vast humanity.
16

28. Eyes
We talk of these curious accidents of biological history.
Look into their eyes, to feel , behind their floating lids,
Streamlets of consciousness that do not form a river
But disappear into the vast wild wastes of nothing,
The beginning life’s pieces that do not fit into a place.
Wonder who was responsible for the cataclysmic changes
That took place, or did not, in their amniotic existence.
( On visiting Akshayakshetra, an institution for the mentally retarded
in Tirupati)
17

29. On return from the Jagannath temple in Puri
Images of wooden Gods, of a jungle tree
Meshed with celebrations of celestial love.
The theme remained of beauty in sandstone
Of its golden brown hues against the sky,
Of a yellowed middleman ‘tween me and God.
He, the omnipotent God, seemed armless
His eyes were large, circular and lidless
He sees us unblinking, in our absurdness,
In our countless follies and pointless fears .s
18

30. Our elephant-God
Before the onset of winter
Our dear elephant-God arrived.
The beginningless God presided
Over our every worldly beginning,
Rising from the mud-peelings
Of our own Magnificent Mother.
He laughed at the annoying
Asymmetry of the imperfect world.
The moon mocked at his belly
That rocked with food and laughter.
The crowds cheered their clay-God
Painted in kitschy acrylic colors
And national pride was restored
Amidst cacophonous film music.
(On the Ganesh festival this year)
19

31. The Body
The body lay there in the room
With flies and people buzzing.
The pale face looked indifferent.
Tomorrow it will go down
Into the bowels of the earth.
Yesterday night he was busy
Searching for a quick-fix solution
To his life’s problems in the
Froth of the golden yellow brew.
The body had a fatal hunger
Just like the woman in its life.
Scoops of dust settled on the coffin;
It had no complaints about life.
(The death of our Security officer ,Stephen )
20

32. My little pal on the ICQ
The last time I saw her on the net
She was still growing milk teeth
Strands from her tufted hair
Danced on her pretty forehead
She wore her unspoilt innocence
On the lambent parting of her hair.
She now talks of man-woman stuff
In the morning she sits on my icq panel
Like the little blue-green bird of summer
Which sat on my parapet wall of balcony
Heaving her meager body as she sang.
A frayed uncle of full forty years
Wants yellowed sleaze on the sly.
What should she do, with a lustful man,
Who wolf-whistles in the silences of the net
All she needs is a little gurgling brother
A bundle of shrieking flesh in mother’s lap
Or a freckled school-boy brother in shorts
Not a leathery-skinned lecher of an icq pal.
Take my son, my dear, hold his hands
Walk into the freedom of the mountains
These little blackberries taste no sweet
Although they bleed and redden your palms
And their bushes have piercing thorns.
21

33. (A little girl named Shakti from Australia was on ICQ with me for a
long time)
22

34. At the famous Tamil poet Subramania Bharati’s house
There were no shadows on the walls
Only a tall silhouette of a
Beturbanned, deep-throated poet.
His songs had spilled over
Into his countrymen’s hearts
Like Tamraparni river in spate.
An elephant, not the colonial power,
Cut off his sonorous voice
Sure ,poets shall die young.
23

35. The Muse
In a dim-lit corner of this house,
I looked her in the eye, intensely
Below the unswept wooden stairs.
She stands starkly, under the shadows,
Her gaze intently fixed on the line
Between an expectant earth
And a translucent blue May sky.
(At the poet Rabindranath Tagore’s house in Kolkata)
24

36. The Marble Mausoleum
There is this woman-question, ever.
She screamed from the bowels of Time
Fluttering her soulless eyes in anger.
A megalomaniac emperor had her,
Embedded in a cold marble vault.
The marbled beauty of the mausoleum
Smothered her inner self leaving her cold,
Like this man’s fabled passion for her.
A fourteenth child was not for celebration
She helped create his entity, lost own.
(Written on a visit to the Taj Mahal . Mumtaz Mahal, in whose
memory the Moghul emperor Shah Jehan created the Taj Mahal
had died delivering her fourteenth child )
25

37. The legend of Sivakasi
Here a horse-borne King had faltered,
Stopped by his Queen’s purple flow
The bilwa leaves had become green
The phallus-God shall be installed
Brought here from the banks of death
The desire-cow refused to move
Its udders were full with the milk
Everything must go on unhindered ,
All is ripe for love , ripe for death.
26

38. Death of a woman
She stared at the roof beam,
The wood that was once a tree.
A tailless lizard came from
Behind the beam to look
At her for the umpteenth time.
Kitta kitta , said the lizard
She who had become ‘it’ stared
Unremittingly at the beam
That was once a forest tree.
The beam looked at the lizard.
The continuum flowed endl’ssly .
(Written on the death of my mother-in-law)
27

39. Skull-pot
Here , I sit on the edge
With my feet dangling
In the abyss of time.
On the far-line I espy
A pile of stacked skulls
Of large circular eyes
With the mountain air
Hissing through them.
There were thoughts in other skulls
When their own holes were eyes,
That wished no brains in them.
What did the skull-pot think,
When , lying on a string cot,
It saw the smile of death
Where the banyan met the sky?
(Pol Pot, the infamous dictator of Cambodia was responsible for the
genocide of a million innocent people in the name of ideology )
28

40. Dying of excess life
She is collecting frost in the cell’r
Early tomorrow she will embrace fire.
This evening she died of too much life,
Excess activity in her cells, life’s surplus.
Meantime life goes on and music goes on
In the temples of our dear elephant-God,
The music of death, the music of life.
(concerning the death of a relative from cancer)
29

41. Bankura horses
In Bishnupur our horses do not fly
Like the horses of the Sun-God’s chariot
Their long necks are brittle and funny
Our broken terra cotta temples are Godless
The temple ponds are now dhobi ghats
Our gods no longer adorn the Dance Hall
We have potato storages, eve’rywhere,
And our listless young men are playing cards
Under the shade of the ancient banyan.
Our famous horses do not fly these days.
(The Bankura horses are made in wood and clay .
Making the horses is a cottage industry in Bishnupur.
There are 35 ancient temples, in laterite and terra cotta,
dating back to the 17th /18th centuries . The temples are
exquisitely beautiful and are not in a good state of preservation.
The area is predominantly a potato-growing one
with a large number of cold storages.
The seasonal nature of the potato cultivation and trade
has resulted in large scale unemployment in the area)
30

42. The moon
This season our backyard coconuts
Hid it under their swinging fronds
Behind our asbestos-sheeted shack,
Its presence marked by the pale shadow
Of our cow swishing tail on the insects
In the backyard’s lonely darkness.
The cow looked in the water trough
Giving out a low plaintive moan.
Her eyes shone through the night
As the rope of the pail seemed to move.
Actually it was a mere water snake
That had made the well its home.
Our hibiscus stood mute by the well;
Its flowers went gray by the moonlight.
Tiny flowers bloomed on the creeper
That had climbed our red-tiled roof.
Their fragrance filled the night air.
It was as though it was the moon
That smelled good in our backyard.
31

43. Living in space
Several ugly apartments rise in silence
Their hues a dark mix of kitsch and color
There are bellied men in the holes up there,
Surrounded by red blue and yellow colors.
They are not earthlings in their daily life
Sure they do not seem to live on the earth.
Perhaps they are not men but birds in fact
They live in holes in space like birds that live
In nests and come down to the earth for food.
They then fly back to their holes in the night.
(Looking at the pigeon-holes of apartments in our residential colony
in Hyderabad)
.
32

44. Dream
When I live in the night I forget night
On the rim of the night I stand apart.
It was that time deja vue and a night,
The big clutter of dreams hap’ned in heart.
The night was when it was a poem, a dream
Of blood coming from the forehead and hurt
By somebody’s stone from roof and beam
Because dreams are real and in whole and part.
They are not just flimsy unreal sleep things .
When dreams happen real things happen in sleep.
We think and dream and not miss what life brings
Because knowledge slips and life slips and sleep.
Life slips and sleep ,moments of wakefulness
If we are not mindful, in life’s bus’ness.
(Bleeding in the head from a stone hurled by somebody is a
recurrent motif in my dreams)
33

45. There is defiance in the air
A girl in white stands in a far corner of the road
Her right pigtail defiantly slung on her left shoulder.
There, bleary-eyed moms stand impatiently waiting
For yellow buses to take kids to reluctant schools.
It had rained heavily last night on the neredu tree
There was violent wind and violet rain from the tree.
The puddles under the tree were violet with ripe fruits
Mashed under walking feet in rain water and mud.
The woman takes the white dog out for a walk
But the dog pulls her sideways for sniff-sniff.
Apparently the dog has fiercely independent views.
An old man with his lungi duly tucked above the knees
Is dragging the bawling brat grandson into the house .
The three year old is defiantly dragging grandpa away.
He does not see eye to eye with grandpa on all issues.
(Events in the morning walk)
34

46. The 70’s man
He floats around in the park softly
Like a creature from another time.
He wears the 70’s clothes and listens,
As he floats in its space, to the music
Which emerges out of his left pocket
Spreading like a rain -puddle around him.
In the blue clouds and over the waves
Of the wind I hear the song you sing.
35

47. Marriages
The bridegroom, in a thick suit, comes in
Wearing a red vermilion on his forehead
And a blotch of sweat under his arm.
Marriages are hot, sweaty and blood-red.
Marriages are tents full of clarinet music.
Marriages are sonorous Sanskrit chants.
Marriages are several silk sarees rustling
As though the spring wind is already here.
36

48. The grand plot
In the story the gaucho is set upon by other gauchos
Among whom he recognizes his godson and asks, ”Pero Ische?”
A thousand years ago, Caesar similarly asked, ”Et Tu, Brutus? ”,
As he recognizes Brutus his friend among his assassins.
The gaucho now dies so that the scene can be played again.
Neither the gaucho in the story nor Borges had any choice.
(On reading The Plot –A short story by J.L.Borges)
37

49. A doctor’s marriage
A nose-sniffing doctor marries a doctor.
We are listening to the wedding chatter
As though we are on the operation table
And consequently, are in an extended dream.
The sounds of the chatter reach the ceiling
And come down to meet us on our plastic chairs
In a steady stream of indistinguishable buzz.
The nose-sniffing doctor sits on the stage
With the non-nose-sniffing doctor behind a curtain
A middleman priest calls down gods in Sanskrit.
We are in a morphine-induced dream lying
On an operation table undergoing surgery.
Our nose-sniffing man has sent us in our dream
He is sitting by the side reading Kamasutra.
But actually he is going through strange motions
With the non-nose-sniffing doctor who is his bride.
The middleman priest is invoking gods for him
Making him circle the smoking fire seven times.
38

50. Memories of the city of Porbandar
The city stands on the sea where the waves beat black rocks,
The white surf of an ocean which stretches to distant Aden
Where the ancestors had landed in a dhow to make trading money.
Tall white stone buildings stood quietly against the blue sea.
At night they wore the transparent veil of pale moonlight .
On moonlit nights perfumed society people stood on the promenade
Among the rocks where the waves from the distant Gulf beat the
city.
Dark people sold smuggled tape recorders with whirring tape-spools
.
The whitewashed buildings had white peace in their upper bellies .
But in their under-bellies they had fishermen’s knives and red
revenge .
A frail old man from the city made white salt at the sea-shore
And spun white cotton on hand-wheels making others wear white.
39

51. On completion of the construction of a house
The house workers who had no house
Shifted their house things to another house ,
Everything on their heads
And nothing over their heads.
40

52. The afternoon sounds
A lonely worker chipped away at the neighbor’s roof ,
A leaking roof between the sky and my neighbor
When the sky poured torrents of rain on his head.
The hammer-beats echoed in the hollow afternoon ,
Interspersed by a yellow-black bird’s tireless notes.
The notes came from our dead standing brown tree
Which was still hosting beautiful yellow-black birds ,
While awaiting final execution by the municipal Axe.
41

53. Our temple priest
He is our temple man , our friendly intermediary between us and
God.
His words were a mere drone in the temple loud speaker in the
morning
But the power of his words extended beyond the earth’s borders.
He has a belly round as God’s earth, with cosmic incantations in
them
His words and flame and water connected us to our monkey god.
42

54. The pastor and his niece
The pastor’s mind is dark as a moonless night.
In it she is a sepulchral figure, cold as death.
Some times, on certain moonlit nights
As the world becomes unbearably beautiful,
She looks far, far away as he talks about God.
And she suddenly laughs and hugs him.
That is when the pastor becomes father.
He sees their silhouettes in the pale moonlight.
There has got to be reasons why God created
Pastor’s nieces and boy friends and moonlight.
( On reading Claire de Lune
A short story by Guy De Maupassant)
43

55. His gods ,my gods
As rain falls softly on the gleaming park trees, I walk on the wet
track
And its etched geometrical shapes move endlessly like Nabokov’s
trees
Which seem to be going on a pilgrimage to somewhere all the time.
The boy in his story has drawn gods with round eyes looking at the
sky
My own Gods have unblinking eyes which see everything,
everywhere
Because they do not have lids, they see all the time, all the space.
(Reading Gods, a short story by Vladimir Nabokov)
44

56. The last days of my mother
Behind the wall the sound had come
Of illogic and helplessness, in bed
And in the insecurity of the bathroom.
Then she laughed her eyes slanting
It was at life she was laughing
Now at you, steeped in life, in her eyes,
From behind the mask of unreality.
45

57. Desires
He has grown hard in New England
Growing things from them stones.
Because God is hard and lonesome
While them kids are soft and easy.
He has now grown ripe on the bough
Desires under the elms make them all
Grow ripe and fall to the ground.
(Reading the play “Desires under the elms”- by Eugene O’Neill)
46

58. Our time is leaking
We are all creatures of night and poetry
We stand here on the brink of the night .
On the other side we hear this green oil
That is leaking ,drop by drop, into the sea
It is our time which is leaking into the night .
(Concerning the disastrous oil leak in The Gulf of Mexico)
47

59. The last lecture
In Randy Pausch’s last lecture there is space
Left briefly only to be occupied all time-
The space that will exist all time, lacking
In substance like a quarry in the hillock,
Which exists as long as the hillock lasts.
Let us imagine the quarry hole filled with dark
And you stand on the rim of the hole that exists
In absence of space and presence of time.
As you continue to hit tangentially the last lecture
You do not get into the Randy Pausch’s circle
The circle of an inspiring cancer death
The circle of dark quarry humor with a twist
You merely stand on the rim and lean into the dark
Straining your eyes to see own reflection down there.
(Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood
Dreams)
48

60. On my mother’s death
While I was having my head shaved in her smoke
I asked why the hearse should have blown the siren
As we had gone about throwing flattened rice on her silence.
But,when she was alive, the van that took her
To draw a map of her brain’s electrical wiring
Had blown no siren at all on the crowded roads.
Later, in my complicated muslin cloth and ashes
I wondered why the river flowed in my mind and the road
When there were no rains in the Vindhya hills beyond.
49

61. Thoughts at the Srirangam temple
My people’s concentrated history
Flowed through these stone archways
Stone people who lived on forever
These are my own dearest kinsmen
And my flesh and bones are made
Of the same powdered red rock
We worship the same granite god.
(Looking at the exquisite sculptured figures on the Srirangam
temple walls)
50

62. At the memorial forest for the departed
We looked for her in a revived memory
In the greenness of the memorial forest.
A young mango tree flourishes for her
In the vast dome of the academy’s sky.
The boy-keeper says it is fine and green-
At the corner the monkey-God is waiting
To be housed in a reddish-tinged temple
Along with the Goddess with extended tongue.
Here my mom shall flourish in good company
Soon there will be green mangoes hanging
Alongside the morning sun and silver rain
And tiny vivid birds heaving , on its branches,
Their bodies filled with sweetness and song.
(We had planted a mango tree in a Memorial forest in Bhopal in my
mother’s memory)
51

63. You , me and him
You would wish to ask him why
Our friend’s son has not returned
From his bath in the Ganges .
You cannot ask such questions.
You can , of course , whisper them
Softly into the misty morning air
Standing on your toe on the railing
In the dizzying heights of the Qutub .
If and when you get your answers,
Please whisper them into my ears
Above the bazar din of Chandni Chowk .
(Concerning the death by drowning of a colleague’s young son in
Roorkee)
52

64. The laughing club
The men and women here laugh
For no particular reason , really.
They cannot help it , however.
They belong to the laughing club
Other people hurt yet other people
Everybody laughs for no reason
Endowed with a free lower jaw.
They cannot help it ,you will agree.
(Watching the laughing club in Bhopal Ekanth park)
53

65. A warehouse prince broke her horn
She just does not sit around doing nothing, night and morn
Look at her glass menagerie of animals , cute and unique-born
Take a look at the silver-glowed unicorn with his pretty horn
A prince from the warehouse comes riding into her life forlorn
It is this warehouse prince who breaks the horn ,her poor unicorn
Strangely she does not mind it- we mean this loss of unique horn.
(The Glass Menagerie by Tennesse Williams)
54

66. The poet stands upright in his pants
Bukowski’s lady had him off the bottle
He now tries sundaes of different flavors
Now he does not have to listen to Mozart
Shostakovitch and other classical bloke
Through a surreal haze of smeared smoke
He now feels cool like the ice cream people.
Above all he stands upright in his pants.
http://hellopoetry.com/poem/the-icecream-
people/#ixzz0vbAOS0XJ
55

67. The memoirs of a Geisha
The geisha had eyes like rain.
There was laughter in her eyes
That looked the color of rain.
Just an artist of the floating world,
She dances sings keeps men happy
She is just a half-wife of nightfall
The rest is shadow, the rest secret.
Thank god it is just her memoirs
Just an afternoon movie on the telly.
(The memoirs of a geisha, a film)
56

68. Waiting for the boat
(h t t p : / / s o u n d a r y a l a h a r i . f i l e s . w o r d p r e s s . c o m / 2 0 1 0 / 0 8 / w a i t i n g - f o r
- t h e - b o a t . j p g)
They are unknown quantities;
they sit still in shadows and evenings.
sometimes they crouch expectantly
waiting to be reality-copied
they are huddled together
on the muddy shore of the lake
for boat and togetherness.
57

69. What the old trees do not realize
The trouble is they want to remain homes
To the many homeless evening-birds
Which incessantly chatter to slum kids
Pouring out of their improvised shanties
With tin roofs glistening in the sun.
They do not realize even in their death
That our gardener’s three-stone stove
Is waiting impatiently for their dry logs
To arrive in its enormous, crackling fire.
(Concerning a withered tree in our Bhopal house which were
unwilling to fell even after its death because it was the home to
several birds)
58

70. Flickr. dreams
I have several black and white “flickr” dreams
Nobody touches them because they are
Just my black and white dreams ,not theirs
And it is the colored ones they are after.
59

71. When death happened of my driver’s father
In the meanwhile there is this driver’s drama
When he gets into train to see ailing dad
He hears dad already dead of too much sugar
And look,death is so sweet and so prosaic!
60

72. At death ceremony of a relative in Eluru
Trains bring people to river canals
Where death is a mere after-fact
Submerged in flowing green waters.
61

73. Sunrise and flowers
In my nights of waiting
For sunrise and flowers
I look pain in the face
I struggle to think in flowers
And rising orange suns
My night then fizzles down
With its false props to pride
At five I wake up bleary-eyed
Trying to catch beach suns
Before they turn white.
(After a restless night in the hotel in Chennai smarting under under
a hurt ego, I got up at 5 A.M. and headed for the Merina beach to
catch the rising sun on my camera)
62

74. The Wishing Well
With my back turned
I hurl stones after stones
Into the wishing well
Disturbing the frog’s sleep
In its libidinous dreams.
My moon had fallen into the well
My pail could not bring it up
I continue to drop stones
Someday the water will rise
To bring up my beautiful moon.
(This Wishing Well is found on the hills of Yercaud in Southern
India.The legend says that if you manage to drop at least one stone
into the well ,out of three attempts, with your back turned on the well
, whatever you may have wished will be fulfilled )
63

75. On a rainy night in Hyderabad
With hot springrolls we plonked into deep chairs
To watch waves after waves of silver rain
In the night’s depths the fogs croaked in gusty unison
Over shallow puddles on the edge of the street.
64

76. Waiting for a flight at Mumbai
At the vaulting dome waves refused to travel
Unless on a few pieces of silver and a name.
The flying metallic bird will take two full hours
These angels in turquoise will feed our appetites
(Although Mumbai airport was wifi-enabled I could not access the
internet)
65

77. On failing to get admittance to the Taj Mahal
Yesterday’s eye-red was but a phase
Having lost the moonlight all the way
Behind large doors and khaki authority
(When we pray in marble mosques
We tend to get killed on Fridays
Because beauty does not really matter
But only the blood-red duty-call)
In the end we see where the king went
In the cold cellar,past earthly beauty
The priest’s God-call pierced the vault
As beauty is not truth,only coldness.
66

78. On return from the temple of Puri Jagannath
The Lord of the Universe secured my sanity
Images of wooden Gods, of a jungle neem tree
Interspersed with celebrations of celestial love
The theme remained of beauty in sandstone
Of its golden brown hues against the blue sky
Of a yellowed middleman between me and God
He , the omnipotent God ,seemed armless
His eyes were large , circular and lidless
He sees us unblinking ,in our absurdness
And in our countless follies and pointless fears
67

79. Fear of death
Death crawled on the tender underside
The body threatened to explode in fear
Up there, on the first floor, you were alone
With sweaty fear between you and infinity
What seemed to matter was a dusty existence
Enclosed in divisions of space and time
In the cold cellar darkness touched your body
Smelling fearfully like yesterday’s death
There was death in the smelly dankness
These insects were creatures of the dark
Their life signified your ceasing to exist
We know their bites would not matter
There is this mountain in exquisite morning light
Which will become the center of your self
And grant freedom from the flesh to the world.
(A poem written on a visit to the Ashram of Ramana Maharshi in
Tiruvannamalai )
68

80. River noise and river silence
river noise and river silence
swept by leaning trees and rocks
carry ashes of our living since dead
rice balls are carried in rapid water
reaching distant rivers in hills
our fire is lighted ,our rice cooked
for our no longer kin but airy spirits
we chant strange words ,sonorous
words that release airy nothings
from real bondages ,strange.
words are airy nothings too
the body is nothing ,just sleeps
and it turns into ice and ashes
swathed in ice that holds body
while it does not smell ,quietly
bodies that look at the sky
disappear the next morning
in ashes of flowing water
we tried to collect two urea bags
full of she who bore us into the world
the boat enters midstream
without looking back we hurl her
her ribs were trying to hold
after the fire they are cinders
we scoop her in our bags
all the while we chant strange words
that mean nothing to us or to her
our words are ashes ,our love ashes
69

81. a bag of yellowed bones
(my mother’s death)
70

82. The peak in Hong Kong
Here we talk on the peak ,about the peak
And some times walk gloriously on the peak
In summer our performance peaks in the peak
As tiny white lights glitter through the dark
The stars peak in their glittering performance .
71

83. Sitting in the car on a rainy evening in Bhopal
Evening rain glistens on the road
As bread is bought and bananas are
Turned over for ripeness and less ripeness.
The rain is dancing on the car roof;
From the car the camera tries to catch
The wet sun on the leaves of the corner tree
Soon the wipers catch fever and quickly
We make our way in a sea of umbrellas.
72

84. Remembering a schizophrenic boss
That man in anger thinks he were there
But anger makes him just not there
Because he wants much to hurt you
Not in the stomach but in your upper.
He is quizzing because he is not sure.
He gets into a maze of wordy thoughts
And his words confuse you and him.
They hit you in your solar plexus and his.
Now, now, he wants to saunter leisurely
On the frosty wastes of the snowed hills
As I saunter leisurely now in this night
On the frozen darkness of my years.
73

85. Thoughts on a rainy evening in a Midnapore hotel
The day sizzled as though
The Gods were being angry
In the evening the sky opened
In electric anger hurling
Torrents of water through
Our hotel room windows
The windows were fragile
And too full of gaping holes.
Alone , in the hotel room,
I thought a thousand things
The day’s vacuous bits , inane images
An old heritage building
Overrun with wild vegetation
Phantoms from the mythical past
Rose from its ruins and history
I heard the Kauravas’ war cries
Ferreting out Pandavas in exile
From their secret existence
Then a trigonometrical puzzle
On the hill everything appeared
To this speck of consciousness
As if standing on the edge of time
Soon sleep came in waves
Demolishing the hotel walls and
My flesh-and-blood existence.
74

86. Looking at a painting entitled “Books”
In the beginning there was chaos in form
Beauty eluded us, lacking formal symmetry
A prestine female form then appeared
From somewhere -then another,close.
A shadowy dark form in the wings
A scramble for crystalline knowledge
Neatly bound volumes to be crossed over-
A crossing over to the world of the dead
A conscious demolition of made-to order
Then emerged beauty leaving us breathless.
(Asha Radhika ‘s painting )
75

87. Morning at the Grand Hotel,Kolkata
The morning crystallises
Pure and silver. At seven
The moment slowly swells
To an iridescent event
Amid outcry of cutlery
And bone-clatter of china
Sparrow-love on the lawns
And aromatic hotel smells.
76

88. At the temple
The moon fluttered atop God’s flagpole
A thousand oil lamps smelling God
Scattered birds in the tree’s darkness.
(At the Balaji temple,Bhopal on a Full Moon day)
77

89. The rock
The drill cut through the rock
Until there was no rock
Only a bluer sky.
(When I saw , from my balcony in Hyderabad ,the construction
people drilling a rock to make room for a housing project)
78

90. Prayer
In the rock lay my lovely child-God
Who was born today morning.
There is this saffron-robed monk
Under the folds of water in the rock
Lighting the perfumed camphor for him
In the dark recesses of my mind
Whenever the orange sun is missing.
(On visiting the cave temple of Rama in Bhopal on the Srirama
Navami day (the birthday of Srirama)
79

91. Hair cut on a Good Friday
This Friday should surely be good
Topped up by an evening hair cut
To cleanse fear deep in the follicles
Helped by a fakir* in the head-cloth.
(Shirdi Saibaba from whose Samadhi temple I had just returned
after seeking his spiritual grace)
80

92. Break
Break is what touches metal
And nerves and mental state.
Break is sound and disconnect
From life and living and love.
Break is midnight and strange
Huge buses cutting down life.
Break is not another morning.
(Upon hearing the death by accident of the business partner of my
neighbor)
81

93. The wind palace of Jaipur
(h t t p : / / s o u n d a r y a l a h a r i . f i l e s . w o r d p r e s s . c o m / 2 0 1 0 / 0 8 / i m g _ 2 3 1 9 . j
p g)
The soft pink of the wind palace
Does not jell with her poverty’s
Blazing red tie-and-dye saree
Too kitschy for our proud art,
Too sentimental for our souls.
Let us have bright red bangles
They contrast better with the pink-
There is still poverty left in them.
82

94. Passing by a tribal weekly fair in Bastar
Yesterday was the day of cockfights
The birds stared at their bound legs
Waiting to bleed their bird-friends
Our white fluid glistened in the pots
We went high on smelly rice drinks.
We made a rope circle among trees,
That was the bloody arena for cocks.
Our basket threw up big plastic dice,
Our village youth staked day’s labor.
Our children now have blue uniforms-
They will one day be clerks in office.
83

95. Suicide
There a bald man walked into the sea
The sea of emptiness beyond the window
Wanting to get back to the mother fast
Inside, a greedy woman , a son in fog
At the end of the street they all disappear
Where there is a blind turn, a dead-end.
(Upon hearing the news of the suicide of a relative)
84

96. Dying of love
You watch the celluloid horror
Of a twelveyear-old girl
Lying spreadeagled, shrieking
As knowledge strikes as horror
In the suburban train
Of three living-dead humans
Watching a twelveyear-old
Dying of love.
(After watching a Hindi movie on the video in a night journey by bus
from Mumbai to Hyderabad)
85

97. Mankarnika ghat
(h t t p : / / s o u n d a r y a l a h a r i . f i l e s . w o r d p r e s s . c o m / 2 0 1 0 / 0 7 / d s c n 7 2 6 7 . j
p g)
The Manikarnika ghat
These people have come here
To solve existence problems
On the river that washed sins,
Human bodies and buffaloes.
They came from a far off river land
Where sins are equally washed.
They are wearing dark glasses
And their lungis above kneecaps.
They speak an ancient tongue
And eat mounds of liquid rice.
But when their boat reaches
Within sight of the Manikarnika ghat
They are deeply afraid in their eyes
Like you,me and our ancestors.
86

98. ( Watching a boatful of Tamil pilgrims on the holy river of Ganges in
Varanasi)
(Manikarnika ghat is the ghat (river steps) where one meets life and
death:it is the cremation ghat on the Ganges in Varanasi .It is
believed that the soul will attain liberation if the body is cremated
here.)
87

99. Upon the death of a colleague
He who knew my secrets is dead
In the field and on his house .
His own secrets are safe and secure
In the lock- and- key of my aliveness.
88

100. Tribute to the Shehnai maestro Bismillah Khan
I had dreamt of a magic, a mere thing
Waiting to become a mere thing
Just like a rock of inorganic cells
A few chromosomes carry all memories
Of my primordial world, of giant-sized eggs
You see I have invented a reed bringing forth
The finest smelling finger hole music,
Smelling of oil-lamp flames extinguishing
In ancient temples behind closed doors.
I have invented golden- robed gods smiling
In flower decked finery, with vermilion
On my forehead where it is all written.
I have invented half-burnt corpses flowing,
In flames, on fragrant heaven-promises
This morning the reed vanished abruptly
In the fragrance of the river’s shadows.
89

101. Remembering a dream on one morning
In the morning it all came back ,awake
From the dream, the planet called the earth
The birds chirped among new-born buds
Their colors spoke interminably of dreams.
90

102. On the tiny hillock in our bank’s staff college in Hyderabad
It is the sleeping rocks that glowed
Their contours passionately etched
Against white houses in blue spaces.
We had tiptoed all the way to the hillock
As the trees looked down on us,clinging,
Their foliage witness to our fecund follies.
91

103. The royal palace
The palace was luminously wet and reached out to sky
In its shadow lay the kings and their faceless women
Whose fine drapery interrupted their noses and seeing eyes
Under big-vaulting domes and resounding halls.
Their noises went up to the ceiling and returned empty
Like their noses and eyes lost from their faces.
They were not lost actually but had never been there.
When the silks arrived they forgot the women’s faces.
The women sat there gossiping about other women,
Other women in the harem and their fine draperies.
Their men’s bloated egos did not show on men’s faces;
Their men’s egos showed on the women’s stomachs,,
On the little heirs to the throne who came from there.
A fine bangle,a glittering necklace and some pearls
Hush talk about the latest addition to the harem
And other scraps of conversation went on as it rained.
They had no faces for the evening conversation,
Only bodies fully draped in the finest gilded silks.
In the beginning they sat on the ground huddled.
Later the West grew on them in the white man’s land
And they sat on sofas and high backed chairs presiding
Tea ceremonies just like the sophisticated women.
They still did not have their noses on their faces .
92

104. Trying to make poetry from a joke
Afraid of the seething world within
I took pictures of my pulsing bagpipe
A white ghost with a tail in his neck
Watched the geometry of my heart
On the flatness of a luminous world
In this bath we are all naked and frothing
He with the cat’s eyes had his own geometry
I co-swelled with him in creative pride
In our separate apostasies we fell prostate.
Everything fell in place except this joke
As love’s summers passed for wintry nights
The joke is now on me prostate and falling
As I try to make pretty poetry out of it.
(About a general medical check-up I had undergone in 2008 .The
examination revealed a prostate enlargement ,the beginning of old
age problems that will slowly creep in as one advances in age)
93

105. The cherub in inverted spectacles
The portly gentleman looked at himself
In the bathroom mirror and smirked.
In the shrill voice of his childhood
He made some really funny noises
Which yuckily merged in cistern sounds.
He tried to think simple like child
He will go out and pick some berries-
Bleeding berries from the red mountain
But mother says Banti it is sleep-time
Will you now lie on your back and sleep
How can one lie on one’s back and sleep ?
It is fun to wear spectacles upside down
The world looks so much different.
Not for me the complicated transactions
These grown-ups are terrible bores.
I will now dig deep in uncle’s backyard
I will find several nuggets of gold there;
These teachers are sometimes stupid
They ask funny questions in their class.
The big gentleman looked at his paunch
This time the child is not coming back
Everything is once again complicated
The cherub in spectacles vanished
In the mists of time , not to come back.
(This is me and my cousin’s young son on the surface but it is
actually me now and me then. Obviously the portly gentleman is me
now and the cherub is my cousin’s son who was asking all those
94

106. questions! The me then comes out now and then)
95

107. The hanging of a child-rapist
That was a clinching moment.
Darkness spread its wings;
The walls were already closing in
As they had been threatening
These years , nights and moments.
Their pale textures merged
Into the corners of his mind.
The time has come to experience
Slow and painful unfilling of space ,
Sudden, abrupt ejection into Time,
Just like that little girl, you see,
Whose piercing cries precipitated
His inevitable descent into hell.
On the other side of the glass wall
Her lips seem to be moving
He cannot read them, now,
The mists on the glass are thick.
(Based upon the hanging incident of a youth from Kolkata who was
condemned to to die for the offence of raping and murder of a little
girl)
96

108. In the tea gardens of Coonoor
In the blue mountains
Passions do not rise high
The mountains gently shake
Tall shimmering silver oaks off
The wind in their hair.
These fat matronly mountains
Squat pretty in the valleys
Wearing their best velvets.
The air here is tea-fragrant
As magical woman-fingers
Pluck two leaves and a bud
And hurl them into baby-baskets.
Time here hangs lightly between
Sips of tepid C.T.C. tea .
97

109. A boat trip on the Ganges in Kolkata
On the Babughat the Ganges wore
A splendid necklace studded with images
Of inverted candle lights under the bridge .
The flickering flame of the lantern in the boat
Refused to dance to the wind’s death-tune .
Near the jetty stood a dark monstrosity
Brooding over its unillumined loneliness .
Its cavernous stomach ached with
The darkest secrets of the high seas .
98

110. Morning at the Palm Hotel, Vizag
At six the crimson orb
Bursts out of the sea’s vastness
A red-and-white old lighthouse
With patches of chipped-off paint
An apparition of a coconut tree
With its frond struck down
By last year’s lightning.
99

111. Photographing the cranes in the Bhopal lake
They belly-rest on swamp,
Snow-white, on murky mud
In a funny numbers game
Near the brown broken wall
In the luminous evening lake.
Pearl-white they take off
And suddenly swoop headlong
To catch fish and tiny worm
In utter boring repetition.
100

112. Fire and water
Dark girls with jasmines in their hair
Stood unblinking all day, in the hall,
Bringing fire into other people’s lives.
Listless sweaty men made balls of fire;
Tired old ladies kneaded fiery dough
There is fire in their tired hearts,
In their dulled minds , on their hands
But no water to quench their thirsts.
(On a visit to the firecrackers and matches factories of Sivakasi)
101

113. Prayer
The sounds settled on our core
Touching our conscious, our selfness
Metallic music poured forth
From yellow discs in fevered rhythm
As our sepulchral child-egos rose .
Our consciousness flapped its wings .
We only rise once over the clouds
Our waxen wings melt too quickly
But our memories remain of flying.
(After a visit to the ISCON temple in Bangalore)
102

114. The hill is dead
The ring road is surely our city’s proudest diamond ring
On its side lie the mangled remains of our mountains.
(A thought which occurred as I drove down the newly made Ring
Road in Hyderabad)
103

115. The bride
Her long back arched silently
As she crouched and waited
For history to break and begin
With fresh stories in the making.
( A pen-sketch of my cousin’s bride done at the marriage)
104

116. The skin
My skin hides my flesh and my bones so well
But is darkly opposed to sunlight and after- life.
My twice-born superiority in it is challenged
By that dark woman who says we are those
Who wear their knotted hair on servile backs
And carry the dead on their hunched shoulders
For a meal in their belching brahminical stomachs.
My skin was fair and complexion clear a year ago
And my bones were in their proper places below.
Now at the dead of the night the water flows
On my skin giving the foretaste of dark death
The death of my skin, the close-end of existence
(My eighty year old aunt who lives in a home for the elderly)
105