Living at an Edge

We scrape our dirt, store it
In a jar and wait for it, hoping
It doesn't rot.
Poems are pickles, a decay
Used to our advantage.
A breath of life added to
Something that's dying or dead.

Incense sticks in a dirty
Dark rooms that haven't felt
Touch of a broom.
Broken chairs before anyone
Could reach to the noose.

Empty roads engaging in a
Small talks instead of losing
Track of their path and
Suicide notes deciding to
Forget it all by becoming
Paper crafts.

The drowned, saved by a
Lady's mouth to mouth.
And the ants dancing in blood
To leave a script that occupies
Your boggled head.

Looking back at the abyss
When it stares at you,
Bouncing back from the pushed
Borderlines is what gives you wings.
A breath of life to what's
Dying or dead, art comes to you
Only if you live off an edge.

Discerniblity of Time

Time passes, grain by grain like
Cooked rice in a baby's mouth.
Then it turns discernible tick of a clock
In night to hail upon sleepy senses.

You don't realize how you grew tall
And wrinkles on Grandpa's face
Progressively increased. Then,
Grandma dies leaving a void in
The family of seven.

Father's command over his gait
Changes, mother's saree starts to
Shed bright colors. Your brother's
Pants passed over to you fall short
And you grow a bit of hair on
The face and a lot, elsewhere.

Time then starts leaving marks,
And scars, claiming a couple of
Friends- one to marriage, one to
Unbearable debts and another to
A highway on a rainy day.

What once hailed upon you
At night, eventually gets to you
In the morning as you sit alone
Staring at the empty cups.
The ticks turn into threads of
Loneliness strewn across your
Coffin-like walls.

You count them initially but now
It doesn't really matter.

Smile

His face on the other side 

Of the foggy window,

Making faces, trying to make

You laugh.

You're not sure, whether

To laugh at him or this

Questionable reality.

But you know, people

Managed to have time for

Dinner in a war?

Some even managed to

Write songs about the snow

And how it covers the dead.

It's funny how a man laboring

In a wheat mill can take his

Happy siesta on sacs of grain

And go without any food 

On the plate by night.

People laugh clenching the weight 

Of hunger in their stomach.

Children build castles with

Empty bombshells and 

Thank God for the makeshift roof

He has provided.

Sometimes it's necessary to

Carve your lips wide with even a 

Blunt knife to force-feed smile 

To the gloom-ridden teeth.

The touch of all emotions is

A basic human need.

And especially when there's

Someone outside the window to

Witness your smile, bless 

The poor lad.

Meanwhile

Meanwhile, the wind blows,
Leaves fall, Dogs bark and
Their voice is dissolved to 

Nullity in a while, but 

Someone, somewhere will 

Listen to their silence.

It rains elsewhere, a baby
Cries after birth, eggs hatch
And the flowers bloom.
Even in war people prepare
Lunch and hum.
Life goes on.

Someone falls in love,
Someone else falls out.
A stone that moved from here
Creates a hole.
But eventually, it'll be filled
By water, dust, or trash,
Or by a combination of all.
Somehow people make peace
And find their place.

Things take time while they
Wait for stuff to happen to them.
The boredom of beauty,
The rush of chaos or any other
Way, if it could be put in.
Life happens like a Lazy Giant
Taking eons to open his eyes.

In the far reached of the sea,
The spring will hoist its Sail,
To reach that one last leaf
On the withered tree and
The next day you'll be surprised
To see yourself infected
With a fresh bloom before
It's too late.

Nonchalance

The alphabet while they sit
Side by side to form words.
Do they talk?

And the bank pages, while
They lie upon each other,
Feel the urge to invent a
Language to say it all?

Consider the silence between
The thoughts before they
Get connected, to come out
Of your mouth.

The silence between
The names of lovers etched on
The distant rocks,
After they fall apart.

Consider the silence before
The drum-stick hits the drum
Before your fingers poke
The strings of the guitar, and

The silence before a song falls
On someone's ears and sync
With beats of their heart.
The silence of the river before-

It joins the sea in apprehension.
And the silence of the unfilled
Prayers of the kids who didn't
Get their share of toys.

Scorched earth while it sat
Flaunting it's aridity and
The raindrop before it transferred
To it, Its vulnerability-

Did the silence of both extremes
Feel the urge to shout out
Their union for the sweet pleasure
Of olfactory lobes? Or

The Petrichor is just a fusion
Of reinforced silence to display
The nonchalance of day-to-day
Romance in nature?

Existentialism

No one is important here

No one is unimportant.

The thin line that divides 

The right from the wrong-

No one is categorically

Good or just bad.

Logic seems to sometimes,

Shake hands with irrationality

And everything seems 

Random.

Some made-up patterns

Inturn have blown out of

Proportion too-

Nothing is real here..

There's no illusion too.

The universe might just be 

An atom and the atom seem 

To be high on it's own 

Vastness.

Some look up in the sky

To swim in the saline water

And some get into the sea

To conjure the stars that

Do not matter.

Everyone's their own hero

Here and every other is an 

Unintended villain.

You're less than a nullity in 

The grander scheme of 

Things and at the same time-

Everything.

Why Fly Beyond?

Why don't you slash
The ceiling of the sky and
Fly to the beyond they ask.

And the Seagull says, as
The sun paints the evening
With its hesitant red-

About the new lovers across
The river that can no longer
Talk with their eyes.

And about the dreamy wanderer
In search of a shelter, lost
On trails of rugged grass.

The messenger of God astray,
In search of feeble prayers
In the dark hearts.

And the old woman worried
About her wool not passing
The eye of the needle.

Then the aged cattle, hungry cats
And the redundant dogs
Suffering the same misery.

The Seagull says-
When I'm the hesitant lover,
I'm the dreamy wanderer.

When I'm the messenger
And even the dark heart.
The cattle, the dog, and the cat.

When I'm the unsung, unable to 

Find my song in my own land.

What are the chances beyond?

Skeptic

I'm not a cynic or out of bound 

Positive person in any way.
Romanticist for sure but many a
Times a sense of existentialism
Keeps getting at me to make
Think I'm a nihilist.

I'm that person who doesn't
Want the roses to die.
But not the one who believes
That its beauty can indefinitely last.

I'm a realist that way but I
Also have this urge to glorify
Elegance of that rose and
Believably explain its
Aesthetic impact.

But then again I'm afraid of
The thorns too- so there's always
A sense of restraint from
Any form of attachment.

And sometimes the fear of
Thorns stretches so much that
They take the shape of a ghost
To haunt me at night.

Amused by the freshly arrived
Spring and equally haunted
By the autumn that would
Shower dry leaves-

I tread carefully between
The narrow lanes of two faces
Of a coin. I know it's head
Or tail any given day.

But I overthink about the thin
Rim of the coin that might decide
To beat the two definite odds.
I'm definitely a skeptic that way-

But am I?

Odd Chances

That one flower in the garden
That didn't want to bloom.
The rooster that didn't want
To take up the responsibility,
Of waking up the world.

That one matchstick that
Didn't want to burn instantly,
And that man in the Nazi army
Who refused to salute.

One Nerd chose to observe
The Apple Fall and the Butcher
Who fell in love with his sheep
And chose not to sacrifice.

These rebels without a cause
Trying to create a ripple
In the empty expanse of
Nothingness-

There was a big bang to
Create astronomical giants.
And one insignificant,
Pale-Blue-Dot decided to

Give a chance to an
Amoeba first and with
Evolution, what followed
Is the rest.

Life must go on

The doctors gave up.
All savings dried up.
Children, where?
At this time he doesn't care.

He peers at what's left
Of his life and the heaps
And heaps of loneliness
Terrifies him--

So this Oldman chokes
His ailing wife to death
And kills himself to escape
The inevitable misery.

Elsewhere, another Oldman
Screams daily thrice
From the kitchen to take
Cooking lessons from

His bedridden wife,
As life must go on.

Selling Pain

One of my friends is
Seeing a therapist and
He laid out in front of me
The cost of his therapy.

The aggregate amount he
Spent over the past three years
Was nearly two lakh rupees,
That got me into a calculation.

The per cost of his pain
And depression was around
Two hundred per day.
That's almost double-

The per-day cost of my
Breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Pain is expensive I realised.
I bought a weighing machine
To quantify every ounce of mine.
Kilograms of pain and tons of

Misery every week-
In lumps, sheets, and heaps.
Clogging bathroom drains,
Some, as stench under my bed.

Some of it soaked, wrung
And put on the railing to
Eat sunlight. Some of it
Swept in a corner to discard.

Some of it spread on paper
With pen and ink and
Sometimes colors and
Blood-ridden cravings.

Sitting in my melancholic hill,
I saw someone frame his
Mental state in a Gallery to sell it
To the geeks who find in it meaning.

I wish there was Khatana Bhai
To stop my Janardhan to waste
His pain over the samosa chutney
And instead, make him hold it

In his loose fist to throw it
At rock music. As Jordan
Was just the pain that was
Sold well.

Hunger

In the noon while I strolled in my
Backyard, a roti fell from the sky.
I looked up in wonder and there was
A crow cawing- must have slipped
From its grasp.

My father immediately asked me to
Rush back inside the house,
Mom joined him to say how-
Lord Shani might change his position
To haunt my astro-profile.

And from a distance, precariously as
I watched, wth a quick dive, the crow
Picked up the roti to fly away.
The emotion of hunger there was
That simple.

Crude as coal and pure as gold.
Devoid of any dubious morals or deceit-
Hunger often is the shortest distance
Between the stomach and the food.

A compulsive affair of desperation
And hope on repeat.

Making Tea

First, you put half a cup of water
And leave it on the flame.
While you add two spoons of
Tea powder. Maybe a half more.

Then the same amount of sugar,
A bit less maybe.
Then you watch, till the bubbles
Show up with signs of boiling.

Now comes the milk, almost
The equal quantity of water.
Don't pour more thinking it'll

Taste better. This is not coffee.

As you pour milk and it mixes
With the decoction, you should
Observe the way it mixes like
Some mystical painting.

And as the color turns from
Black to pale and from creamy
To brown- the waft of aroma,
That elates your head-

You know the quality of it
Before even tasting.

And when you strain it in a cup,
The tip of your tongue already
Dancing over the moist fumes.
The first sip sends your soul-

Into the space. You'll have to
Pull it back after sipping one more.
And one more and more till
Your astral self makes peace

With your actual one.

The Bubble

What about the bubble on
The water? What if
It starts to ask questions,
About its existence?

Can it though? Does it
Have enough time?
Enough life?

Born in a blink and faded
In the next.
Is it what living in the
Present means?

Vanishing away before
Even the past makes
An effort to talk to an
Instance of future.

What if we're that bubble?
Just alive for an instance
In the astronomical time-lapse?
Vanishing away before-

The giant-eyed God
Closes his eyes.

Whose blink of an eye
Stretched maybe for over
An eon or an epoch-
And while his children

Play in the evening with
The soap water.
Blowing the bubbles and
Clapping when

Floating little humans
Burst open.

There goes a century
Of our expectancy in
An instance and our

Obsession with living

In the present.

What was the question
Again? A lifetime in
An instance or an instance
Containing a lifetime?

A bubble as a man or
Man, himself being
A bubble on the water
Of space-time?

Whole

When I ride the bike,

At 60kmph in the rain,
I'm the head in the
Confinement of the
Helmet.

While I walk throwing
My steps against the
Blackness of the asphalt.
I'm the insignificant force
Per square feet.

As I hold this pen,
Trying to gather thoughts
To ram them against
This martyred sheet
Of trees..

I'm the illegible trace
Of the lines.

Coming up with heavy
Steps, tired.
Becoming the thud of
The door.
Spreading myself by
Becoming the bed.
Then the coldness of
The slow-rotating fan.

The mind goes numb,
The eyes slowly close.
The exquisite comfort of
The sleep invades-

Now, I'm anybody,
Everybody and nobody.
Only in the existential
Nothingness of slumber-

I'm complete. 

I'm whole.

Imagination

As I sit here in my room,

Listening to Indian classical
Fusion on low volume.

I can't help but notice,
The swish of wind and chirp of
Birds, just outside the window.

Little away, maybe be in
The backyard, someone is
Washing the clothes.

Further away,
As I consciously make
An effort to listen.

There's a drill running and
Sound of running vehicles
And honking.

Beyond that, I hear nothing.
It's as if I'm deaf.

Then I look out of the window.
Stretch of houses, shrubs,
Trees, and a distant factory.

The hill meets the sky
Maybe some faint clouds,
And then there's nothing.

This deafness after some
Meters and blindness after
A couple of kilometers..

That's the limit.

Then there's imagination,
To mend, bend, and redefine
The existing reality.

There, only there I think
We're infinite.

Fate

I kicked a stone on
An empty road.
It rolled around tumbling
And disappeared on
The sidelines.

I kicked another that
Rolled to the wheels of
Approaching car.
The driver threw at
Me a fiery look.

I took one more in
The line of action.
Upon a kick it,
Took off to hit my
Friend in the head.

Now he's on the
Hospital bed.
Who I am? He asks.
I smile awkwardly
To hide my deed.

Years and years later,
When he realised
It was me. To return
The favor, he kicked
A stone at me..

Which bounced off
A running truck and
Hit his head again.
Who he is? He asks.
Looking at him, I smile.

His pending revenge,
It might take a couple
Of years again..
While another stone,
Might be waiting for him-

With his name written
All over it.

Silence

The silence that

Stands on the

Margins of pages.

Unused places. 

Often untouched,

The silence that

Sits on our backs, 

Where hands fail 

To reach.

The silence that

Broods in the 

Corner of a room,

That doesn't 

Accumulate enough 

Dust to hold 

Your attention.

The silence amidst 

The thorns in

A rose bush,

That doesn't get

Due credit.

This silence,

Often is a lack of 

Reciprocation.

Between what

I said and what

You heard.

This nonchalance

For the things, 

Unsaid and unheard. 

The gap never 

Gets filled. 

Silence 

My dear is the

Ruin good things. 

House of Hearts

Beyond 

The confines of

Right and wrong.

There's a house.

Of neither white

Or black,

There's a cat. 

That doesn't cut

You on the road, 

Casting curses. 

There's a dog,

That doesn't bark

At your appearance. 

Bend to criticisms, 

Or wriggle its tail 

Snipping your

Affluence. 

Settled beyond 

The negations of

The crowd. 

There's a memory

Of an evening,

That laughed with

The day and the night. 

To console the

Green and saffron,

There is colour,

The white.

To calm down

Your anger and

Anxieties,

Pair of ears that

Can really listen. 

There are dreams,

Shared realizations.

Spread over

The divide of 

Differences... 

There is hunger, 

Which is such a 

Sympathizer.

There is even

A kitchen that 

Can serve both

Kheer and biryani. 

Egg-rice and

Avalakki. 

If you can shed 

Your wicked thoughts, 

Toxic perception 

And bitter judgments. 

To sit and chat for 

Some hearty laughs.

You too are 

Invited. 

Hunger

The huts and 

The houses haven't 

Been spared.

Even the forests

And mountains

Stand obliterated. 

Burning everything 

It touches, 

The fire, 

Can it be any more 

Hungry? 

.. 

The flames and

Hopes have been

Doused.

Even the stars 

And galaxies are

Eclipsed.

Gulping everything

That glows. 

The darkness,

Can it be anymore

Thirsty? 

.. 

Slowly it effaces

And erases.

All the evidence

Of existence,

Even the traces

Of breaths are

Done away with.

Creating voids,

In the memories. 

The oblivion, 

Can it be anymore 

Empty? 

.. 

Holding the fire

And the dark

Under the helm 

Of oblivion.

The Time, feasting, 

Even on the voids

And vaccums.. 

Isn't it the 

Real glutton? 

..