Category: Poems

A shoe is gone. A single shoe.
The right one, spirited away.
The left is left alone, afraid.
A sock is lying on the ground,
Awaiting washing up again.
It will keep having newer shoes,
Until it rends and frays itself.
The solitary shoe is mute,
Resigned to lose its sock as well.

For months I have been trying hard
To add redundancies galore,
Ensuring nothing important
Is ever out of backup plans.
And yet today I scrambled hard
To find a backup for my phone:
The phone that always stays with me
The one through which I manage things
The one that has the backup plans
For all the other failure points.
Of course the data’s on the cloud,
Of course the laptop’s always there,
Of course I can do thousand things
But not the emergency ones:
The ones that involve making calls
And frantic bursts of WhatsApp chats,
The ones that need me on the move
With all that power in my hands.
It’s good it was a quiet day
A day of nothing important.
It’s good somebody’s watching me
And testing systems I create.

Why seek the name of the wise,
When answers are all you need?
Why think only one of us knows,
Where exactly to lead?

If your mind’s distraught in doubt
And knows not who to ask about,
Know the wise ones may not hold
Sway over things new and old.
But a fool, who knows naught at all,
May be the one who hears your call.

One died with God upon his breath.
One killed with God within his name.
Depending on the ones you ask:
One’s a hero, one’s a shame.

No one is right, no one is wrong.
No one is black or white or gray.
An empty hand performs a sleight.
A lotus stem siphons away.

And that’s my Twitter take on them.
So, when you ask me for my views,
Remember what I’ve said before:
I do not watch or read the news.

She stands with gulmohurs in hands,
With rain in hair, a deathly stare
Into the wood that wouldn’t burn,
Into the sindoor-spotted urn,
Into the light that wouldn’t fight
Or even try to clear the sky.

She breaks her wait. To open gate
She goes and drops her urn of woes
Into the drain, awash with rain,
A redness dripping from her head
And trickling over reddened toes.

The myth, the song – they both are wrong,
Except the night felt just as long
As seven nights, without the lights
Of morning ever coming in
Through curtains of the quarantine.

She has become the alpha cat.
She whips the puppies left and right,
And when their Mummy runs at her,
She cheshires off into night.

Her inky skin is stinky clean
Her level eyes have Devil’s charm.
She purred and purred convincing us
Our bell on her was doing harm.

She jumped to scratch the very hand
I used to take her collar out,
But not till she was sure of flight
Beyond the shadow of a doubt.

No more she’s welcome at our place.
No more her meat and milky drink.
She finds me armed with chappals two
And ready if she dares to blink.

The questions come and haunt me now.
The questions I’ve been pffting off.

I know the answers well and through.
I know they aren’t what I want.

Again I’m striding want and need.
Again I’m split on wanton streams.

The boats have different helmsmen now.
The boats no longer do my bid.

Or so I say to cut me slack.
Or so I say to own it not.

My mornings have been starting late.
So late the curfew’s back in state
Around the time I brush my teeth
And fail to touch my yoga feet.

The tick-tocks of the hanging clocks
Remind me of the banging knocks
Of daily debts that wait for me
And care not for my penury.

I see the number on the wall,
The one I always mean to call,
The one that’s still a sticky note
The therapist’s assistant wrote.

I sigh again and leave it there.
Perhaps tomorrow I will share.
Today I have a lot to do.
A lot to do? Yeah, lot to do.

The Truth is often late to brew.
But Fact is instant coffee shot.

You choose to scalden, in your haste,
Your tongue with instant bitter taste.

So when the sips of Truth arrive
You splutter, cough, and call it hot.

With card in hand, she joins the queue,
Which serpentines around a tree,
To get her monthly kilos of
Unpolished rice at one rupee.

With bag in hand, she walks away
To where the grocer waits for her
And halves the bag on to his scales
To pocket thirteen rupees per.

With scales in hand, the grocer goes
To where the miller waits for him
And bargains down the two rupees
The miller tries to skim off him.

With cash in hand, the miller goes
And polishes the brownish rice
Into a whitish grain of sorts,
Which can be sold at fifty price.

With grain in hand, the miller goes
To where they do the packaging.
They seal his grain in branded bags,
Which sport the portrait of a king.

With kings in hand, the packager
Proceeds to where the grocer waits,
And, over cups of milky tea,
Dictates the share of babu seths.

With hand in hand, the grocer smiles,
Servility arching his back.
From suckers of the middle-class,
He profits twenty-five a pack.