Lawyer

Today, I walked up to her desk.
It was messy, unlike her
brisk appearance
that wears the shades of the rainbow
with a casual finality.

There were books,
predictably pertaining to the laws
unruly, unlike her
hair that falls neatly
to her sides.

A hygiene product sat whispering
to the laptop cooler
all black, unlike her
words that smother you with their certainty
and playfully warn you to stay out of trouble.

Probably,
I will talk to her before I go.


---
Note: This poem was published in Algebra of Owls on July 22, 2016. 

The Elevator

My fingers play a tasteless rhapsody
as I slowly rise to my doorstep;

watching my fingers dance in the mirror
I realise
the girl in the elevator
has lost her voice.

It is the season of sickness
and longing wraps its long fingers around my heart.

I disappear into darkness,
a soap lather feather
dissolving in the shower.


---
Note: This poem was published on Spillwords on July 13, 2016.

Untitled: Prose Poem

Remembrance follows forgetting

what follows the river down its course is the truth of all the time that it flowed through: through my childhood mornings spent on the sandy banks shimmering in the early rays of the hungry summer sun still waiting by the horizon for us to offer our prayers, my grandfather offers his obeisance like his forefathers have done for ages as I dip my self in the water’s bosom to wash away the sins of stepping on a bug I didn’t see and of competing with a squirrel for the first bite of ripe mango this year

but time will flow by

sins accumulate with a revengeful ferocity and there is no river left this summer to wash me off my deeds and no memory as powerful as my late grandfather’s prayers lost in the din of the millennium. What will happen? What will.


---
Note: This poem has been published in The Unprecedented Review on June 14, 2016.

Silent Poem

This poem is silent,
lost his voice on his way to a protest meeting.
Now he keeps his silence,
protesting the silencing.
Or maybe the brave middle-class poem
is just scared.
Ever since he valiantly voiced his view
that silence is a weapon of the masses
the token of resistance
has been stuffed down the throats of his countrymen.
So the poem goes home,
and returns his awards to the Akademi. 

Note: Excerpts from this poem was published in a feature in the Deccan Chronicle on March 21, 2016.

Poem: Remembrance

i remember how well you remember me

meeting again
after
a brief gap
of centuries

you shook my hands
     welcome back
your eyes gleaming
your face split open in a terrible smile

Spellbound

It has all gone dark

and my spine tingles as excitement peaks

dead are the monsters who in my dreams do creep.

I remember cummings

i like my body

my memory is disjointed

against your body

oh, cummings! your words do excite my mind

but my body is mastered by a different softness.

When the fingers lay entwined

unable to find their true owners

but run riot over every bit of skin they find

the darkness prevails

and the excitement leave us breathless

and we pant 

and ponder

the beauty of existence

and tears roll down our cheeks

what mastery of the body

what bewitchment of the mind

I wonder if even buk can tell us

buk is careless

you tell me

but go to pablo, your mate

I know your distaste for buk’s dark honesty

but pablo, I agree, is our man of the moment.

While I still wonder, 

the calm washes over us

and we breath normal again

and darkness is blinded

by a well-meaning stranger

who haunts the dreary corridor.

Grandmother

I.

(Thanks to kind Fiona Bolger)

My grandmother sits there
chanting in a muted voice
krishna, krishna, krishna krishna
the prayer drifts on
playing its own music
hitting all the chords right
the words forgetting themselves
in their own rhythm

as she slowly drifts
to an uneasy sleep
induced by a mix of pills
and exercises prescribed
by the man in white
whom she loathes above all

as the advertisers on TV
drone on ceaselessly
explaining the fundaes of stock markets
and the newsmen lamenting
the fall of rupee
as the markets flopped

as her dreams fill with nightmares
of the doctors' white coat
whiter smiles
waiting to prise her open

she startles to wakefulness
and as on autoplay
resumes the quite chants
om parasakti nama
om parasakti nama
om parasakti nama
om shanti
shanti
shanti.

II.

She sits on the porch
on a creaky stool

leaning on the red armrest
looking out at the world passing by

her eyes never saw much
ears failing now

but in the bicycle bell of the newspaper boy
she hears how the world fares

the sun seeping through the trees
shows her lives no one ever sees

in the void of the house
she lives a hundred lives

past converses fluently with an uncertain present
leaving the present a muddled mess.