The Lopsided View

 Trying to capture
the turbulence in the flow,
failing miserably to understand
the enormity of the perpetual show,
the poem they conceived
ended up starting from below.

The cold gaze,
ensconced behind
the iron cage of conventionality,
made their hearts pound with fright,
and the ensuing fight
brought them down to their bony knees.

The pagans, the few,
the lopsided view.

The Spectacle

Contemplating the silence of the night,
with the worldly bedlam
of my daily existence,
giving in to my iconoclastic misgivings,
not intending, nor expecting,
to find an answer,

I squat on the floor,
wide awake, gazing out.

Hanging outside the window,
the luminescence of a petrified night,
stares into my myopic eye.

Finding solace in my darkest hour,
she puffs a mouthful in my face,
my world gleamed at once,
a thousand epiphanies arose.

I didn't have my spectacles on.

A growing tail of three islands

Once upon a time, in a country that consisted of two big islands, located in the Tethys Sea, a fight broke out between the rulers of the two islands over the ultimate right to rule the nation.

              The bigger of the two islands was ruled by a very able and valiant General Bhondu Pappu and his clairvoyant mother. It was the wisdom and the clout that his mother wielded that guided the General in difficult times and at times protected him and scared off his challengers. The General's mother had a very able adviser in a man called AP, who, in the past, had bailed the rulers out from many a rough waters. AP kept a very low profile and no one knew what AP really stood for. Over the years, many times, when the water started reaching for the plimsoll line, the General and his mother, supported by AP, jettisoned unwanted personnel out in the sea to keep their ship afloat. This island was called Congress, after the name of the highest body of the General's court that consisted of the most seasoned warriors of the island. Despite the hoary problem of the island, that often raised its ugly head, being ruled by a patrimonial regime, the General's subjects bowed down in respect to be in conformity with the established customs. The General's warriors carried out the commands of their master out of sheer personal loyalty and a pious regard for his time honoured status.

                 The smaller of the two islands, unlike the patrimony that characterised island Congress, was one where the Generals did not belong to a particular ruling family and instead their leader was the most charismatic and demagogic of a particular set of popular warriors. The contemporary of General Bhondu Pappu was General Phenku, a courageous man, who was known for his good  governance. Notwithstanding the accusations of a riot that he fanned in the yesteryears and the adversaries he culled on his way to the top, he was a very able administrator and the hope of the smaller island, which by the way, was called BJP for reasons unknown to this writer.

                 The rulers of both the islands were bitter enemies and spared no opportunity of pelting stones at each other. The rivalry of these two adversaries soon reached epic proportions and the fight for the sovereignty of the whole country soon involved the people of both the islands. The people of these two warring islands started throwing stones at each other and the war assumed epic proportions. The fighting continued for months. With the piling up of pelted stones of the two adversaries that missed their targets, a new island started coming up and the people who were tired of the war started migrating to the new island which they called AAP. The reasons for this name are again beyond the scope of this poor old writer and his banal article.

                 With this ensued a three way struggle for power with island AAP trying to defeat the well trained, well equipped and powerful forces of the other two islands that geologically preceded it. The young island made an impressive start by making deep inroads into the older island's power bases by running a propagandist campaign that promised to give the rule into the hands of the common man. The common man, who was so commonly embroiled in his common existential commanalities gave in to the 'power to the common man' propaganda. But with the stone pelting still going on and the fight becoming three way, the danger of more islands coming up and the fight intensifying became a realistic one.

                 This writer, a common man, could not, during his lifetime, witness either the end in stone pelting or coming to power of the common man and died an absolutely common death.
                 

The empty continuum

The black letters of the book
in every corner, every nook,
so devoid of life,
so full of life -
  the impetuosity of an ambushing defector,
  the laggard wisdom of a conscientious objector,
  the wisdom that hitch-hikes on time,
  in the deep fold of that wrinkle,
  the silence of the shadows,
  the commotion of the fringes,
  the rumblings of death,
  the shallowness of each passing breath -
so full of life,
so devoid of life -
in every corner, every nook,
the empty continuum of colourlessness,
holds together,
the black letters of the book.

Rent-free

22/07/2012, Sunday

Standing on the terrace

of the rented house, I’ve been allowed,

I stare at the darkness

oozing out of my

peerless neighbourhood houses.

The valedictorians spent

their time building their Rome,

almost there,

just shy of a home.

The wind picks up,

dust begins to blind me,

pushing me towards

the pun intended and truanted origin I began from.

A place that I could call a home,

with no moorings to build a Rome.

Along with her, I wish I went,

to a place

where they don’t charge the rent.

I don't know what 've I written and why 've I done that. I don't know if anyone can ever interconnect my sporadic thoughts. I don't know if someone will ever try to. But do i care ??.. I never did.. and I still don't..

The start..

7/2/2012, Tuesday

Some hard bound moments ago,
thinking I was home and dry,
I left my placid faith cold,
on a paralyzed piece of wood.

I galloped into
a world of overgrown affectations,
a world of metaphors and similes,
a world trying to pare away,
the uncertainty from tomorrows,
a world draped in
the naked shades
of circumscribed salvation,
a self professing happy world of
ritualized incarnations,
a world of knifes and forks,
rutted by the ebb and flow of the clocks.

For once, one day, I returned,
to the comfort of
my warm four-walls,
to pick my, now paralyzed, faith,
and kept it in my pocket,
close to the beatings of my heart,
trying to revive it,
trying to go back to the start..


I don't know what 've I written and why 've I done that. I don't know if anyone can ever interconnect my sporadic thoughts. I don't know if someone will ever try to. But do i care ?? .. I never did.. and I still don't..

One last time..

29/1/2012, Sunday

Gingerly forced into it,
by obscene temporal conjunctions,
I went to her again..

On a chilly winter night,
life knocked at my doors,
she kissed me wild,
she took me high,
her teeth dug into my neck,
and her nails made staircase
impressions in my flesh.
She wrote me down
with her brute ire,
into the annals of nothingness.

Gingerly forced into it,
by obscene temporal conjunctions,
I went to her again..



I don't know what 've I written and why 've I done that. I don't know if anyone can ever interconnect my sporadic thoughts. I don't know if someone will ever try to. But do i care ?? .. I never did.. and I still don't..