in the dark of night
a shadow moves
almost creepin
nd whispers
you know me

i see the cracks
gore creeping out
from the dragging feet
i know well
the horror welled
nd looking at the faint moon
i wish to dissolve into dark
i had buried you
i protest and i whine

TEAR LOVE

You never told
The wet ends of your eyes
Made by love charred heart’s smoke
The cracks and the peeping
Unfulfilled hopes
And that sobbing laughter’s
That makes the illusion of intoxication
Story.
From the depth of separation
Your cries
In poetic-mansion they put in decoration
And say how special is
Your teary love.

(Translation of a self written Hindi poem “ashru prem”.)

Eyes

Eyes or are they rings of fire
Desire at the fringes reddens and rakes
Swollen like a pregnant belly
Reproduce a cry, when the water breaks

Oft they will hallucinate
And abnegate what present be
Cobwebs will form on the palpebras
Rewinding and playing memories

The broken mirror of things past
Where sunshine brims the brow with sweat
Reflects a sorry soul who will
Drown in nostalgia and regret

The insidious glance of Used-to-be
Might wound some dreams with jabbing darts
Those eyes that must casualties see
Will also truly purge the heart

Anon in forgetfulness they will smile
Bounce back the moon as they once did
A rising tide from the shore draws back
Soft pressing of palms on the lids

Unheard weeping

“i could not burn”
At the moment of last farewell
You said
Returning my loveletters
“ i will burn...”
Hearing my thses words
You sobbed
“ yes, you must do likewise
But never tell me
on which deathbank did this cremation
of my first unborn expectation...”
since then i am praiyng
whenever youe womb bears fruit
same your first unborn hope
everytime bloom in that
because telling truth
could not ash even i
your that unmarried hope
in those self written loveletters
often serch my own face
and my whole poem
is that your unborn hope’s
unheard weeping.

(translated from malchand tiwari’s rajasthani poem “ ansuni rulaee” in its hindi translation.)

camera

Before the camera
Any date
Like 20 june 1989
I took your picture
Of laughter
Laughter such was that
As fallen from hands
A bronze plate
Do you remember
The thing
I had said
To make you laugh?
You must be laughing still
Because i have been saying the same
Sitting forgotten
The flowing teary garlands
Listen
Do see once more
On that very day’s pattern
Before this camera.
(translated from the hindi translation of Malchand Tiwari’s Rajasthani poem “ camera ke saamne”.)

confabulation

Trishanku in Alps



Holding the half-ashed cigarette between his lips, he appeared at the door of the classroom. Probably mocking the wooden face of that “no smoking” board that hung there for no apparent effect. Suddenly a deadness of discipline engulfed the whole class that was enlivened by the gay chirping of youthful flock. Corridor was our most usual loitering space during the class intervals that we had enough as very few teachers troubled us with punctuality. There was another board that told, “Loitering in the corridor is prohibited”. We laughed on the deadness of those words but sometimes it made me to reflect. I remembered a school day story of a demon who had a big garden and it had perpetual springtime. Children from the neighborhood used to sneak into and play in his garden. One day he saw them. He drove them away, made a big boundary wall round the garden and put a big notice “transgressing the boundary is a big offence and offenders will be prosecuted”. Every time I thought who might be the demon here. My paranoia was just momentary and then I used to think what if those demons crept out from the closed world of fairytales. Anyway, the cigarette was burnt till its butt and he released it from the crab clutch of his fingers. Smoke was rushing out through his nostrils and he gave cool eye to the class. The last flame was extinguished with the shining tip of his right shoe and he entered the class with a solitude around his face. We found it quite befitting for a person who was to teach us Wordsworth. “Who are you?” the whole class was perplexed with this sudden throw. No one knew who was to catch. After floating for a while around the heads it started descending down the benches. Suddenly our smart teacher gave it a fresh blow into air. “ you don’t need giving your name or some other thing like the same. Just tell what gives you the sense of ‘ I’.” equally confusing. Or even worse for many for us. Now I understood why wordsworth was so much fond of mountains. Such deep questions could be solved only under some kind of transportation. Transported into a state of intoxication, affected by the beauty of nature or some opium. But here was none. Logical consequence: question remained unanswered. Attempts were made. “I am what I think I am.” This was the best answer I thought a student of literature could make. This is what art should offer. Unlike science that gives either right or wrong, art revels in the world of deferred judgments. And the answer was exactly that. but it was considered inadequate on the philosophical scale and he waited for some surprise package. When no answer surprised him, finally he surprised himself on the absence of some good answer. We gave a gratifying grin and he gave it a somber acknowledgement by offering us some enlightening views on self. Passing through some gentle obscurities of philosophy, we reached a sublimated level of wisdom that could be plainly termed as defamiliarization of the familiar. We had a sudden realization of the profundity that our body encompasses. If “self” could be an hour-long thing then body must be something of many times bigger importance. However, philosophy did not let it be. Personally, I felt the body of commonsense being mutilated by the cold knives of philosophy. Suddenly Descartes appeared before me, flying upon his wings and performing magical antics like in some popular belief geese do with a mixture of milk and water. separating the two apparently inseparable things. After straying for a while in the wild wisdom of some nature myths suddenly my imagination descended down into the world of reality and I found it absurdly incomprehensible. What strange creatures we humans have become that we can’t buy a single simple thing without creating a hard laboured web of wisdom around it! It took me some moments to realize the import of those words for the examination purpose and I also realized the importance of master’s degree as a career building block. Very next moment I was a most attentive student like any body else, my eyes glued on his face and my ears tuned to his lips. I was so absorbed that I forgot to open my notebook and taking any note. The incessant flow of words seemed making an unobstructed passage into my mind and occupying my soul. A sudden loud tone broke my attention and started. Dear teacher was moving in his evenly smooth tone. Probably I had fallen asleep. My friend later confirmed my guess. I was totally blank on whatever was discussed in the class and whatever I got was merely an illusion of my self. Now I had begun to understand what self clould mean. The only thing that troubled me was that even though I knew what self could be, I could not assert it without risking another fall into a mere illusion. It was after several afterthoughts that I came to conclusion that self is something for self realization, strictly not for explanation. The harder you try to crack into its core the worse it gets for your intellect to track its circumference. And then you are also vulnerable to the traps of false enlightenment. It just reminded me the case of a recently married friend. He has an average built and an average appearance. After their first night of consummation( among maithil brahmins it happens on the fourth night after the mariage) I went to meet him with some other friends. He was at his in-laws’ place as customarily the groom has to stay there till the chaturthi( the four days period of familiarization and abstinance). We went with fishes as the sagun. We found him in a room, surrounded with his sisters-in-law. They were just pulling his legs. Poor chap felt great relief when he saw us. He immediately greeted us and a stormy rush of our friendly jokes drove away the in-laws. He even called them to stay but they did not. He laughed loudly to mark his ultimate finish of the episode. We had some hearty chat and our friend was often blushing. Well, cutting a long story short, he sent our rest two frinds out on some pretext. I expected some spicy thing to come, personally for me. I must tell you, my ears were burning like anything. But a sudden wet voice cooled it like the thing you might guess. “I don’t know for sure. In fact it is slightly embarassing but I think it ok to share it with you. Well this is something I felt…” I was looking at his face unblinkingly. “ I think she was faking at night.” He spoke in a hurry as if the words were burning his tongue and he spitted it out. I dared not to ask him to repeat them. Just silent for next few moments. Quite unlike me who loves being called a chattering box. I tried my level best to fake the troubled look on his face. Honestly it was oppressive. Just to break the silnce I said, “ oye don’t bother yaar! Arre you enjoyed na?” “ well…yaa…I enjoyed. I enjoyed but you know I just felt that she was faking.” I felt his voice drowning somewhere. Pitiable, lamentable, laughable, and above all it was unresolvable. “ see bro. you enjoyed and she also did. Forget if she was faking or not. The game had a happy course. Now forget all this crap.” Supposedly my best logical consolation failed misrably. He gave me a hurt kind of look. “ how can you even talk like this man? It’s no game but a relation. Leave it, you wont understand.” I took a long breathe and repeated with a pretentious mischeviousness, “yaa. How could I understand? I am telling you man just take some gulps down and she wont be faking anymore.” I put special emphasis on the last five words and got a tired kinda smile on his face. Fish was reaaly delicious and it was a most welcome break for all of us. The taste watered my palate as we sat there waiting for our tea which abdul bhai was yet to bring. Wisdom of the day:
doubt and seriousness make a really deadly combination and it must be used with care.
Anti dotes if badly inflicted: yet to be invented.
Immunity: eat, drink, be happy.
What If it turns chronic: turn to philosophy and make the maximum of it.
Diagnosis: when you fail to answer your own questions upto your satisfaction and then try to convince others with your arguments.
What if uncared: well, that is a case study still under way. You can also contribute some data.

MODEST PROPOSAL II

I’m Jonathan Swift. I’m eighty. I’m fifty. I’m twenty. Riding on the popularity of ‘The Tale of Benjamin Button', I’m rejuvenated; I feel young again. From this vantage point I always sit next to you, looking at the vapidity of your vanquished postures(including mine), which resemble that of the Fallen Angels, especially in a interminable lecture.

I believe in Shakespeare’s aphorism, ‘brevity is the soul of wit’, therefore let me plunge directly into my Modest Proposal II. But before formulating this unprecedented proposal for which I expect nothing less than Nobel Prize for Peace (all agog as I’m), let us talk something about our department. Our department is a kiln (we being the child labourers) that churns out Stoics- equal in pleasure and pain. The way we confront shocks and anagnorises, for instance, whether it may be the date sheet episode which was as much full of uncertainties as exit poll during the electoral process; or our internal marks (which we keep on counting -11,12, 13,like a mahajan counts the number of months), it makes us stone-hearted and staves off any contingency of cardiac arrest. I genuinely pity those fat uncles, aunts, and pretty girls who burn their calories in the park and keep on complaining about having cardiac diseases. Why don’t they join our department instead of being swindled by doctors? This will bring them closer to Gandhian ideals as doctors and medicines were an anathema to Gandhi, an idea enunciated in Hind Swaraj.

From Gandhi I could recall the Gita. During exams however hard I swoted to glean various hackneyed expressions from the background readings, my cerebrum revolted after wading through a few pages. And my strenuous efforts to instill into it the Gita’s philosophy of karmanye va adhikare ma phaleshu kadachane and Hemingway’s a man can be destroyed but not defeated seemed as inane and abortive as attempts made by a girl to cover her bare midriff by committing violence both on her T-shirt and the onlookers.

To steer past this enigmatic state of mind, when, once in the evening I came across one of the most prestigious teachers of our department, I asked him, ‘Sir, why do we read literature?’ He responded: Shelley has rightly… I cursed the moment I had decided to demystify myself as it puzzled me further.

A couple of years ago, I read a book Raag Darbari by Shrilal Shukla, where one of the characters talks about the predominant belief among the villagers including their vaidya (a charlatan) that a man after completing M.A. runs the risk of losing his virility to some extent. Had he imagined our department even in his distant dream, I’m sure he would have proposed something better for women too, in the aftermath of M.A., to extricate them from the post-M.A. syndrome. But I’m here, to accomplish the Great Tradition.

Most probably you’ll also agree that eve-teasing and Satanic-male-gaze are some of the foremost problems this bustling city is encountering today. Now the premise of my proposal is that it should be mandatory for all the girls of Delhi to undergo the two-yr odyssey of MA English and if feasible followed by a course in MPhil. What! You still find them stunningly beautiful? Then, let me tell you beauty lies not in the eye of the beholder but in the beholden. Who talks about exceptions and minorities in democracy?
PS: A few months back when I used to make jeremiads about our class and department one of my friends exhorted me to write something on the topic. I remember thinking it was like being asked while travelling to Shimla during the summer vacations whether I would take a detour and travel Switzerland as well in my limited resources. Onerous as the task seemed to me, I dropped the idea. Since I’m an unemployed person now I undertook the task.