Category: Poems

I step into her house and find
The truth behind the clichéd line,
That cleanliness is Godliness.

She wakes up at the dawn of dawn
And with a prayer carries on
Her daily act of sweeping mess.

And once her house is speckless clean,
She doodles with her chalk a scene
Of God in bountiful largesse.

She lives alone, without a phone,
Without a lot to call her own,
Except the clothes she keeps to dress.

Her neighbours always bring her food.
And if they don’t, all well and good.
She feels no hunger, no distress.

At dusk, she cymbals to announce
The object she’ll today renounce,
To live her life with one thing less.

She gives away a thing a day
In hopes the taker learns to pray,
For God is not so quick to bless.

He took away her man, her sons,
Her farms that yielded tons and tons,
Her pride of living in excess.

She’s grateful, though, for fortune’s fall –
A cautionary tale for all
Who lose themselves in quick success.

I volunteer to clear the plate
From which we both together ate.
She blesses with a kind caress.

I ask her if she’ll be okay
To let me take her gift today.
She picks her chalk and smiles a “Yes”.

“And what became of all the books
Of poetry she daily wrote,
Before our children woke for school?”
Exclaimed her husband’s smoky throat.

“They brought her medals once or twice,
And not a month’s worth rent in cash.
You know I found her book this week
In State Library’s termite trash?”

He handed me a threaded file
Of all her coverage in the news.
“No more than twenty headlines here,
No more than fifteen book reviews.”

He handed me a duffel bag
Of browning, flaking envelopes.
“She got a lot of reader mail,
Which kept on fanning all her hopes.”

He slapped atop my shaven head
A statement from the local bank.
“Beyond the three royalty checks,
Her entire passbook’s bleaching blank.”

He threw her journal on my lap.
“I don’t know why I married her.”
Her final words of deep regret:
“I should have started earlier.”

He doesn’t see or hear so well,
But when he trots his walking staff,
The whole of Harichandanpur
Gets up and bows itself in half.

At eighty-five, he daily walks
About seven kilometres
To temple rock (and back again)
To bless the daily visitors.

He is no priest, no mountain sage,
No hermit wandering alone.
They call him now the “Modern Man”:
Was first to buy a telephone.

Was first to buy computers too,
Was first to buy a broadband net,
Was first to buy some barren land
And have on it a temple set.

Was first to make the temple teach
Vocational diploma course,
So women could now get to learn
And that too safely out their doors.

Was first to make the temple house
Refrigerated megacrates,
So farmers could now store produce,
Which earlier would go to waste.

Was first to give employment
To people from the lower caste,
Was first to print the local lore
To chronicle the oral past.

To him, these things are obvious.
To voted leaders, out of line.
To all of Harichandanpur,
His work is simply too divine.

You’ll find him, tired on afternoons,
Lamenting on his painted porch,
“They’ll worship statues of me here,
Forget to carry on the torch.”

You think you’ve had it real rough
Until you join the snaking queue
Of shaven-headed vacant men
Who’ve lost a parent, same as you.

The officer who certifies,
Who puts a number to a death,
Politely stamps and cycles through
Assembly lines of shaven-heads.

The man outside the office block
Awaits with cycle-full of merch:
A cap for every shaven-head
Before they even think to search.

She toddles to the photograph
And hits her head to Grandpa’s head
The way she used to daily do
When Grandpa Zoomed from hospital
To Mum’s or Dad’s or Grandma’s tab.

She likes her Grandpa more these days.
He isn’t wheezing, wizened, old,
But young and smiling, brightly bold,
And wearing all her favourite flowers.

He also doesn’t cut the call.

“And how come you are sitting still?”
“Was I? Really? Really still?”
“As still as boiling water, yes.”
“I’m meditating. Trying to.”
“Too hard you’re trying. Settle down.”
“I’m settled settled, can’t you see?”
“As settled as a land dispute.”
“Mumma! Just let me concentrate.”
“At least, you aren’t breaking things.”
“Mumma! I’m almost thirty now.”
“And past the age of breaking hearts.”
“Ignore her. Focus. Focus hard.”
“As focused as a hurricane.”
“Ignore. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore.”
“And why are you observing us?”
“I’m sorry. I’m a poet. So..”
“So, you will stare at lediz, hunh?”
“Mumma! I’m not a lediz. Baah.”
“You shut your mouth and meditate.”
“Ignore her. I don’t mind your gaze.”
“And now you’re flirting while I’m here?”
“I thought you want me married off.”
“But not to good-for-nothing men.”
“Mumma! So rude of you to say.”
“Say what? He’s bald and fat and sad.”
“I’m sorry. She’s a bit like this.”
“Are you a bit like this as well?”
“How dare you! Don’t you talk to her.”
“I’ll ping you on your Instagram.”
“And you too? We are going home.”
“Afraid I’m not on Instagram.”
“Ashamed, I’m sure. We’re going home.”
“Mumma! I’m talking. Let me be.”
“Your breath’s too shallow. Go in deep.”
“You’re staring at her…Nonsense man!”
“And yes, you’re trying way too hard.”
“You come here often? Meditate?”
“Afraid today’s my final day.”
“Come off. Away from him at once!”
“I’ll pray it isn’t. See you, then.”
“I’m still afraid I won’t be here.”
“At least, you’re still. Come teach me that.”
“As still as boiling hurricanes.”
“That makes no sense.”
“And nor do we.”

The Law erased the casteist lines
Dividing access to the pond.

The Brahmins get to do their rites,
Polluting water callously
By dumping food and wood and cloth,
And ash and seed and holy reed,
So long as they erect a net,
Diametrically engaged,
And drive it with an oxen pair
To gather all the dumped in things
To one malodorous extreme.

The Harijans get to swim and bathe,
Polluting water callously
By dumping impure sweat and spit,
And god-untouchable menses,
So long as they erect a net,
Diametrically engaged,
With bottles tied along the length
That slowly purify the pond
With fresh, collected oxen pee.

Elected instruments of Law
Applaud this well-knit harmony.

You have to have unusual luck
With belching cows and barking dogs
To set decisive feet within
A fifteen meter radius
Of where his hut is squatting land
Belonging to cremation grounds.

And then you have to stop yourself
From bending down and retching up
The moment sunset breeze arrives
With dozen years of decadence.

They say the man can see your fate
As clearly as you can’t his face
Behind the years of sewage grime
He daily rubs on waking up.

They say he sees the Universe
And cannot hold it in his mind.
They say he cannot hear at all
For he has heard Eternal Peace.

They say no man, no team of men,
Has managed to evict him yet.
They say the animals attack
With fury of a thousand storms.

And then there are the ones who say
He’s just a madman feeding beasts.

I’ve come, despite my fear of dogs,
Because a dead man’s notes insist
I come and bring him food prepared
In honour of the dead man’s death.

“Look, look, Professor’s son has come,”
I hear a crystal in my head.
“He wants to know so many things.
Too many, many, many things.
He must come back with quieter mind.”

I leave the packet near the well
And, with a namaskar, return.

“Ah ha! You have your father’s mind.
You’ve figured out my tricky trick.
Come back again with larger meal.”

I haven’t yet finished the thought
And here he reads it crystal clear.
Or maybe it’s an easy guess.

He’s not as scary as he looks.
“Ah ha! You have your mother’s smile.”
No wonder Father liked him much.

She sees her Grandma shed a tear
And switches to a faster gear
To toddle to her saree pleat
And chew it with her quarter teeth.

When Grandma leans to pick her up
She joins her hands into a cup,
The way she does to ask for food
Or when she’s in her Lego mood.

The moment Grandma dawns a smile,
The little guardian nods a while,
Then breaks into her temple peal
Of almost-toothless laughter reel.

It took me twice a weekend when
I tried to learn to love again
The paper on this writing desk,
The ink inside this fountain pen.

My overdose of coffee didn’t
Dissolve the cloudiness within,
Until you came into my dreams
To scratch up all my thinning skin.

It never is too late to say
I love you now and everyday.
You might be just a photograph,
You’re everything in every way.

I feel you read beside me now,
I feel you feed the neighbour’s cow,
I feel your chappals’ thunder claps,
I feel you booming “Anyhow”.

I feel you brush tobacco teeth,
I feel you rub edema feet,
I feel you stretch your aching back,
I feel you cushion up your seat.

I feel you push away your food,
I feel you cycle through your mood,
I feel your disappointed pain,
I feel you say, “You are no good.”

In all of this, there’s more I see –
A way of life, a way to be –
I do not fear your shadow now.
I feel you are a part of me.

In every silly thing I do,
Like reading novels in the loo,
Or squirming at a stranger new,
I feel in me a younger you.

An equal man I cannot be.
I promise I’ll be best of me.