Minakhi Misra

While I am gone away and cannot be reached,
While this distance stands as a wall unbreached,
While I walk free in the whiteness of the snow,
Painting them in hues that only I may know,
While I stride along unknown roads and paths
While I shrivel away at the thought of baths
While I shiver for want of warmth in the cold,
Burdened though under woolens new and old,
While I discover the depths of friends’ loves,
Crowding together around the heat of stoves,
While I sing and shout and crack laudy jokes,
And drink from the plenty of adventure hopes,
While again next morning I venture forth,
In hopes of adding to my life’s full worth,
While I swerve with the car at every turning,
While I feel celebration whetting my yearning,
While I ape and mirror the smiles unafraid,
But inside gape at and fear the miles ahead,
While so aware that with you I cannot be,
Know that in my hearts I carry you with me.

---

Originally shared with a friend in the Spring of 2013

If Truth fails to serve your cause,
Lie, Lie till you hear applause,
Till Victory chooses to bed you,
Till Indecision chooses to shed you,
Till the day your Conscience dies forever,
Speaks back to you, not now not ever.

---

Originally shared with a friend in the Spring of 2013

Opening my wardrobe, I found awaiting
A furious face with its two circular eyes,
Where there ought to have been four,
Relating the tragic history of its partial demise.
With nothing but its crescent shape
It painted, so picturesque,a scene of hurt
Of how the Dhobi in his infinite wisdom
Beat the rock with the weapon of my shirt,
Either to punish me for my tight fist
Of which he never fails to complain,
Or to vent out his sorry disposition on
Having ventured into the angry domain
Of his hardened wife who suffers his moods,
Only occasionally daring to remonstrate
For the sake of the children who go unfed:
A result of their father’s drunken trait.

Whatever ailed my washerman aside,
I had for myself troubles of my own.
Having never heeded my mother’s advice,
I did not know how a button was sewn.
Innocent I was of this arcane craft,
Of replacing crescent with full moon,
And hence to ameliorate the status quo,
I decided to acquire the skill by noon.
Fishing out from my multi-purpose kit,
A needle and a length of coloured thread,
I applied myself to the labouring task,
Each passing moment augmenting my dread.
It was not before long that I could pass
The string through that miniature eye
Of the needle with my trembling hands,
Each time evading the orifice and passing by.

Broken Button’s patience had run its course,
From its earthly confines it wanted severance .
So, to expedite his journey to the other world,
I cut the old string to herald his deliverance.
It found its peace in the dusty corner,
Where I sent it flying to its open grave.
To the one that adorned my shirt so long
Such was the dismal farewell I gave.
I dropped my instruments before I could
Somehow cause the situation to worsen,
Overwhelmed by the sorrow of separation
From such a loyal guard of my person.
I declared that no Button shall replace
It that closed my clothing against dirt.
I proceeded hence, in silent remembrance
To pick from my closet another shirt.

---

Originally published on Quora on January 27, 2013

Hear me out before you leap
To some unwarranted conclusion
As to what brings me to your keep,
To create what confounded confusion.

I am here under the banner of peace
To foster with you a truce of kinds,
To let this unfortunate deadlock cease,
So finally, there will be rest for our minds.

For four summers full, I have laid this siege
On the walls of our home, starving our state,
Painting them in red where they were biege
Repaying their love, with fiery arrows of hate.

But, I am tired of looking over my shoulders
With the sound of every slipping stone;
Afraid that an avalanche of boulders
Will grind me bloody to the dripping bone.

You may forever keep our father’s seat,
Crown yourself with his Silver Crown,
But break with me some bread and meat
With your crystal smile, not your vain frown.

Oh, you crave to mount my head on a pike,
For all the treasons in your state I’ve stirred,
But ponder once the Balance, in sight of Dike
Of my crimes to the horrors of your wrath incurred.

Distance at once your men from me,
Do not let them spill our father’s red.
Draw it yourself with the blade that we
Coveted, when our father was dead.

Come and take that which is long your due,
In sight of all Gods, let us play this scene
How in our home,with my blood let by you,
I atone for my acts and wipe our slate clean.

---

Originally published on Quora on January 24, 2013

Still, I don’t know Why,
I did so often to you lie,
Why I never gave even one try
to secure your trust’s seal.
Seeing how the truth clears
the whole mind of all its fears,
I can only drain out my tears,
till my burning heart comes to heal.

But, if my chance comes,
I’ll set right all of my wrongs.
Give me at least some time
to tell you how I feel.
Don’t forget me;
please leave some space to let me
Live inside your heart till,
my burning one comes to heal.

If I have to,
with no regrets I will do,
All sins you want me to purge true;
before your God I’ll kneel.
But don’t forsake me;
I have no one else to take me,
Into their loving hearts till,
my burning one comes to heal.

Till my burning heart comes to heal….

---

Originally shared with a friend in the winter of 2012

Abashed, ashamed I knelt grounded
Lost to the despair that was my Bane
Till I found wherein I was truly founded:
A discovery that alleviated the pain.
In union the whispers within resounded,
“Rise!” and I was the Knight again.

---

Originally shared on Facebook in the Winter of 2012

Herein, I shall account what dangers lie
Within the sweetness of such panegyric
That lift your esteem to pinnacles high
Through melody of your peers’ music and lyric.
For when words take the superlative form,
They hoist you up royally on the zenith of all,
Leaving no ladders to climb, no walls to storm.
All that remains is the prospect of a downfall.
Readily assumed will be your continued success,
Though there may yet be one to better you still,
And you, so drunk in praise, would fail to assess
Your proximity to failure without your Power of Will.
So heed not when someone calls you the best,
Let not their words poison your efforts earnest.

---

Originally shared with a friend in the Winter of 2012

Entering the bosom of the mountain,
Or passing through the curtains of rain,
Drowning into the confines of the oceans,
Following those celestial motions:
Countless though the manners be
Never was it more wonderful to see
Diving into those vaporising shrouds
Beams of pearly light through curly clouds.
A steady descent across the open sky
Annoyingly bright for the men who fly
During those last hours of a dying day
When the sun flares before it wanes away
Like a firebrand most bright before it is out
Painting the firmament crimson all about.
Holding my breath while breathing delight
I saw the transition to red from white
And back again when the sun went through
And the darkness above the vapours grew.
The Sun with its resilience refusing to die
Pierced once before bidding its final goodbye
With luminous blades broadening with length
From under the clouds with its solar strength.

---

Originally shared with a friend in the Winter of 2012

Tempted, I peep into those quartered compartments
In expectation of some culinary eccentricity from the mundane.
Forsooth, the heart breaks only to discover that
Fate denies any relief from the moroseness of the monotone.
I hope I may find a way out, perhaps by chance.
Nay, says the wallet, and the appetite is sacrificed.

---

Originally shared with internship colleagues in the Summer of 2012

Waiting for the train to come,
Lugging my luggage, I stood
Holding the ticket I had booked
Hoping I could reach home.

He held his handless arm out
Pleading with his empty eye
That had now become so dry
His temple sweating with doubt.

Mixing with the longing to leave
Came an emotion from the back
That really took the mind off track
And made me morally grieve.

Grieve for the losses he bore
At the age when he should play.
How his fortune had turned away
Leaving him at Deprivation’s door!

Only a frowning face so grim,
Which never gave him any respite:
That’s all he received, despite
My heart going out for him.

A result of a modicum of disdain
For the sordid, squalid lives
Of poor men and their wives.
I stood there stoic, but so vain.

His importunate eye never left me.
Diffident, he made no noise.
Stolidly steady, he gave no voice
To the reason of his necessity.

The blare of the approaching train,
Derisive of our befallen hush
Reproved the insolent boy to rush
To escape the stampede of men.

A boiling cauldron of emotion was I:
Relieved, ashamed, guilty and spurred
All at once with moral vision too blurred
To see a solitary tear in a solitary eye.

---

Originally shared with a friend in the Summer of 2012