Hey Birdie

I should name you

after a Flamingo

and make fun

of your long legs.

Or compare you

to a certain Owl

in the Western Ghats

and praise

the symmetry

of your eye bags.

Perhaps

I should call you

a Nightingale

for your voice,

then remind you

that, on most days,

you are perfectly 

capable of being

a humble Crow.

How about Hornbill 

for your non-existant 

beak or Kiwi for overtly 

being an ass?

How about I call 

you a Peacock for

patriotic purposes,

and tell you how ugly 

the females are.

But you know, they

exchange gametes 

through their eyes?

In that case, eww!

don't look me 

in the eye.

Dating a Poet

First, never date a poet.

You'll spend years being

compared to weather.

You'll wake up as "autumn."

By lunch, you're

"an unfinished bridge."

By dinner, you're "a slightly 

anxious pillow."

Every argument will somehow 

become a discussion about 

migrating birds.

They'll pause halfway

through kissing you

because your left eyebrow

suddenly reminded them

of a coastline on an 

old Portuguese map.

You'll never simply make tea.

You'll become "water 

negotiating with leaves."

A headache will not be a 

headache. It'll be 

"the moon attempting to

hatch behind your forehead."

They'll forget your birthday,

but remember the exact 

shade the sky was when 

you laughed three 

monsoons ago.

They'll compare your 

silence to abandoned railway 

stations, your patience to 

furniture that has survived 

five generations, and 

your irritation to a pigeon 

with unresolved 

gut problems.

Worst of all, one day you'll ask,

"Do you love me?"

And they'll stare out of the 

window for fifteen minutes

before saying,

"You remind me of a house

that keeps its lights on for 

people who were never

coming home."

And somehow... you'll know 

exactly what they mean.

Metaphor is a Map

Every map is a confession

that the world is too large

to carry whole.

So we reduced mountains

to triangles, oceans to blue ink,

people to symbols.

Perhaps every metaphor

isn't an invention, but an 

apology for language 

being too small to hold a

living thing.

So you should know when

I reduce your name to a

a certain shade of red. 

Your face to a yellow 

breasted sparrow that visits 

my village every winter-

Maybe I've failed to 

become large enough to 

contain you, and everytime 

you're my favourite 

jasmine or guava my 

grandma loved,

You should know it is a

silent apology for my 

inability to comprehend 

you enough.

So lemme unapologetically 

make you a coastline, 

turn you into a tide and mark 

every place I kissed you as a 

lighthouse.

Every argument, a cliff.

Every return, a harbour.

Let every poem I write 

be a humble submission 

before the sky you've 

grown into.

And every metaphor 

I've ever written be a star 

I've counted, not knowing 

how many more I've to count, 

to sigh into a disbelief over 

''how infinite you are."

Mirage

somewhere I hear the 

sound of your anklets.

and I slip to sleep 

as if it's a dream.

you exist between my

dreams and delusions.

a fantasy if I close

my eyes and a daydream 

when I open.

you arrive without arrival,

leave without leaving,

linger like a question

I don’t want answered.

in that thin space

between sense and 

surrender,

you feel almost real-

enough to touch,

never enough to hold.

and I keep returning there,

half-aware, half-lost-

hoping the sound of 

your anklets doesn’t 

fade into silence.

But it does.

but it does and I go on 

chasing your shadows 

and silhouettes.

sometimes even an

outline seems enough.

but can a mirage ever 

be anything beyond 

disappointment?

well, my fancy with a

palette disagrees.

believe me, 

filling colours to the 

outlines of a person 

who doesn't exist,

Uhh! It's a habit beyond 

a certain repairing.

Distant Presence

Some fruits are sweeter

in their shade than in 

the cusp of a hand.

Possession reduces 

miracles to memories

in no time.

Oh! my distant mango 

on the tree, I would 

rather leave you hanging 

on the branch than 

devour you at once.

May the child in me 

remain throwing stones

at your branches-

never quite reaching,

never quite leaving.

May you forever linger 

on my tongue,

than be fizzled from 

my restless mouth.

I'd rather carry the taste 

of you as a promise,

than the certainty

of an emptied seed.

For desire ripens best

where distance has

no utilitarian end.

Longing is the only forever 

that doesn't come 

with conditions.

Must be

Must be the blue saree

that runs down

like a river.

Must be your eyes

that drown well the 

spread of my solitude.

Must be the bangles

and the anklets that 

land softly like feathers 

on the bed of my 

silence.

Must be the jhumkas

and your dense hair

that wrap me up in

a steady warmth to

sync themselves to the 

rhythm of my cold 

heart-

Oh how it feels to be 

music soaked in your 

distant presence.

A song learning 

itself through your 

close absence-

Must be your laughter

that keeps filling up

the hollow places in me 

with fresh flowers.

Must be the fragrance 

of the same I taste 

on my tongue.

Must be the way

your name trespasses

through every sense

until my sight begins

to blur with glitter.

And now that I see you

in every other face,

Must be you've colluded

with my dreams too.

But he question is

where are you?

Third Grade Anomaly

They say you don't 

need a reason to love.

But I've seen her in a

wolf-cut and saree.

Jasmine flowers and 

oversized hoodies.

Jingles of silver 

anklets while she walks 

in combat boots-- 

Cargo pants go

seamlessly with the 

glass bangles that 

are dotted green.

The leather jacket

and a tiny black bindi.

Ripped jeans and

elaborate jhumkas-

She says 'Ayyo' while 

ordering sushi.

Looking like tomorrow,

carrying yesterday 

effortlessly.

Ohh! the kathakali 

adorning a Gothic 

building-

Perhaps it doesn't 

need any reason,

Just enough contradictions 

maybe.

It's a third grade 

anomaly in a 

second grade heart.

Love is a wound that 

doesn't subside but 

compels you to 

scratch.

Poster Boys

Bhagat Singh's anger is 

welcome, his atheism is not.

Azad's bullet makes a good 

brochure but his politics 

leans left and that's bad.

Zafar's Urdu is beautiful,

let's just remember him

as a weak emperor.

Everything else should 

be erased because of 

his faith.

Bose is invoked loudly.

But his complicated alliances 

are whispered selectively.

Microphones have learned 

to tone it all smartly.

Ambedkar is celebrated.

But his annihilation of caste

must wait outside the 

school Savitribai built. 

But why not restrict her 

to margins or footnotes?

Her rebellion should be 

politely described as 

social work anyway.

And Gandhi walks a tightrope 

between being a saint and 

a villain depending on which 

side of the argument a 

corpse needs to fall.

Revolution, that way,

is easier to digest once you've 

amputated its questions, 

and martyrs are useful only 

as poster boys in party 

manifestos.

History, that's why is not 

what happens. Often,

It's just what's allowed.

We can't be friends

You being sad is alright.

But if we can't talk about a

hundred ways to laugh 

about it.

We can't be friends.

You being happy is alright.

But if we can't peel it down  

to the core, to hold it 

against light to examine its 

existential vanity.

We can't be friends.

I want to know why sorrow

has such an inflated ego,

and why joy always behaves

as though it invented

the universe.

I want to get into the mess

of chaos. Swim in the ripples 

deliberately created by 

stoning the still waters.

I want a cesspool we can

regret and romanticize.

Like, if we can't laugh at 

funerals. If we can't 

philosophize bad coffee. 

If we can't interrupt our 

deepest confessions with 

the stupidest jokes.

We can't be friends.

I don't want conversations

that merely exchange

weather reports of the heart.

I want an intellectual 

vandalism that rearranges

each other's thoughts to

leave fingerprints on 

each other's worldview.

I want us to disagree 

without becoming enemies.

I want us to change our 

minds without calling it 

defeat.

If curiosity of certain kind

finds us to make us reckless 

about our explorations-

Let's end up as footnotes in 

each other's thinking.

Let's argue all about it,

till we embarrass ourselves 

into a dungeon of 

comfortable silence. 

And only if we're compelled 

to fill it up with something 

unnecessarily,

We can't be friends.