Monday, May 21, 2018

Love

Love is not for
Cynical cowards
Love is only for the brave
Who believe in love

Monday, May 14, 2018

Portraits - netri


Her hands sit beside her
Her voice is mild, almost sweet
I ask her about her daughter
She replies with affection

And when a group of men come into the room
Everything changes
Her hands start flying out
She starts banging the table
Her voice rises
I suddenly notice
That she is wearing a waistcoat
A shirt, trousers, and a modi waistcoat
The attire that has come to symbolize
Formal, authoritative dressing in our times

I know she is putting on a performance
And yet I also know
Why
She knows they will not respect her
If she is mild and sweet
To be a leader
Is to leave behind your sweetness
To be a leader is to command
To push, to exert
To carry your decisions through
To be a man, in short
 Or what a 'manly man' is supposed
Anything less, or anything else, 
is a sign of weakness

I wish she had known what I know
That it’s ok not to be a man
And you can still be whatever you want

Portraits – Shikshita

She knows she is wise
She knows she is much more
Than she is given credit for
She knows she could have
Eaten the world
If only she had learnt to read

It came to her, so late
So late
And yet she will make the best of it
She will not let it be wasted
This boon from saraswati

Every time I ask her a question
She will jot down the answers

She is wise
She knows everything
By heart

But she will write it down
She will frown
She will study it
She will make corrections
And then, only then
Will she look up

And she is so proud

What do I mean to you?


I planted the barr
And I planted the peepal
Hoping they would live

And you gave me seven hills away
Not caring if I die

-          A daughter’s lament, sangini

impressions - narakot


Like that one particular city
In the list of invisible cities where
The distance is measured
Not in meters
But in how high the pole should be
For the festoons to be hung
In the middle of the square
So that they don’t hang in the faces
Of the revelers dancing below
And how high the balcony should be
So that the lover can
Climb up it at night

In this particular village
To go from one house to another
You walk past the yard of one
And down the wooden ladder of another
With steps carved out of a single stem
Peek past the kitchen of one
And step lightly across
the living room of another
And so that at any moment
You are sitting on the roof
Of one neighbor’s house
And at the base of another’s
With half a dozen ladders
Sticking out at impossible angles
From your yard
Some going up, some going down
And some, a stranger will never
Be able to figure out

How high do you build you walls
So that when you set out you
Rice and corn to dry
The husks don’t fly down to your friend’s?
How far away from the canal should you be
So that the waters of another
That create a noise beside your house
As they flow by on their way down
Don’t enter your house?
How strong should your ceiling be
So that it doesn’t break
When the dozen children of mathighar wrestle
And how thick should your floor be
So that you can sleep despite
The moaning young couple of talaghar
How high a window should be
So that you can open it to enjoy the moonlight
But your daughter cannot climb out at night

In that particular village
If one house decided to build a pakki ghar
I wonder if it would still
Have a way for travelers
To pass through their living room
Still have angles
For a dozen ladders to lean on
And how everyone else will negotiate
The road, if the house turns out
Not to have these facilities
I wonder if they will
Have anything like a ‘proper’ road
And if they will ever master
Walking on that road
Without anything to climb
And anywhere to descend

I wonder if that will be better
More ‘subidha’ than this
But I wonder if the loss of beauty
Complicity, the way one house shows
Hundreds of years of history
Is more important than modern comforts
I wonder if I am romanticizing
A difficult lifestyle,
And if they wouldn’t prefer
The ease of a road, after all
And then I wonder if
I am exoticizing something
That is nothing out of the ordinary
That it as natural as breathing
To those who live in it

Monday, May 7, 2018

Tuesday, May 1, 2018

Mute

What's the point
Of putting your chats on mute
When you don't bother...

I better
Put my heart on mute
Teach it not to jump and leap
At every little beep