Dogma

Belly crushed, insides
Exposed- you lie there.
Wriggling and grappling
For life.

Just beside you, I stand
Cursing the driver for
Not even bothering to
Look at his mishap.

Despite all the turmoil-
Out of sheer repulsion.
I fail to reach you and
Choose to pass by.

Maybe my gut would have
Churned a bit more,
If you were a cute little dog.
Or a sparrow or a pigeon
With a broken leg.

But who cares for a
Piglet right?

The empathy in my heart,
Seems, it can only be bought
With gold-plated tears.
And it goes unsold today-

Making even your blood
Worthless- over the dogma
That comes with you
In my surroundings.

Temporary Relief

The clock in the train station
has an itch in its back.
Rock-paper-scissor between
The second-minute-hour hands-

As to who shall scratch it
This time. And just for a while,
Everywhere- time has stopped
Past midnight.

No one is partying,
Making out or cursing their
Bosses or waiting for the
Next weekend.

None is hungry for a while.
Or depressed or dying
Out of shame. Or trying
Hard to fit in somewhere.

No power change, no war or
A threat of a nuclear attack.

It's just quiet- insects have
Found a comfortable niche.
Dogs free of leashes and the
Mountains, don't want to slide.

And before it could have
Gotten any better,
An abrupt streak of light
Appears in the dark sky.

This time, the minute-hand
Lost it, it seems,
Now that the back has been
Scratched-

Suddenly,
There are forest fires.

Pronouns

An earthen pot and
A plastic bucket sit,
Side by side thinking
If they should start a
Family.

Maybe one will be
Called a plastic-pot.
The other, as the
Earthern-bucket.

And if there's a
Third one claiming
It's gender fluid,
Then it can be used-

As a dustbin.

We Men

We men, we don't do
Sadness.

We often learn to
Hammer nails in our eyes
To stop tears from
Making it out alive.

Nail by nail, the emotional
Rapport with self that dies
And the attitude to fix
Everything by hiding it-

Good at erecting walls
Around our emotions
And vulnerabilities.
Brick by brick-

A seven-storied building,
That learns to smile.

Knowing each other's
Conditioned compulsions-
The son and father,
Unable to hug each other.

Unable to console a friend,
Unable to help mom in
The kitchen.
Unable to understand
My brother's depression.

We, with clenched hearts,
Closed minds.
Who can fix your broken
Bikes or leaky taps-

But unable to soothe
Your ailing hearts.

We who can laugh loud and
Argue ourselves to death.
But fail to look at the mirrors
And talk to ourselves.

This distance between
You and us, and the
Deep trench-like emptiness,
That keeps on sinking,
Within for generations.

It has set a precedent for
A supposed masculinity.

A bear with muscles,
Moustache and beard.
Dictating constantly
About how-

There's a manly glory in 

Being a corpse than 

A teary-eyed pussy.

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?

Gender

From tree to tree the

Monkeys that hopped,

Have suddenly remembered

What it's like to fly.

Some weaved 

Themselves wings. 

Some had to steal from 

The birds instead.

The birds now have 

Forgotten the art of flight.

So they've imprisoned

Themselves in cages-

To feed on crumbs 

Thrown by men who

Think flying should be 

Banned.

Luxury of Grief

She, a mother at the

Age of eighteen-

Lost her son to 

Pneumonia last week.

Husband in a local brawl 

A few months ago.

In-laws in a bus crash

And her widowed-

Mother to asthma,

The year before.

Autumn hovering

Over her life,

People falling off like

Yellow neem leaves.

Her tears dry down,

Before even they

Could make it out

Of lashes.

Goodbyes, tired like

Worn-out feet of

Women fetching water 

In Lathur.

The weak roof on

her head, out of pity-

Has decided not to 

Collapse-

To let her have a

Discretion over her

Grief at least-

Not anytime soon.

Idle

A man by the roadside
With his broken car,
Instead of fixing it,
Tuning his guitar.

Fisherman, instead of
Baiting the fish,
Trying to tame the ocean
With fish-nets for what?

A rat in a painting is
Now homeless by
Eating up the canvas in
The night.

A fence in the locality
Has turned jobless again,
By grazing up the only
Apple farm.

A terrorist became
Kind after listening
To Sufi songs and a
Nazi with sore feet,
Has failed to trample
Fresh thoughts.

Like a monkey with
No lice to pick on-

Characters like these
With no closure,
Sit idle, wasted in
My stories-

The way I do with
A pen in my hand,
Instead of a broom to
Clean my dirty room.

Fortune Tellers

Of all the bustle 

There was at the footpath
Adjacent to Azad Park-
Of the hawkers, cobblers

Old-book sellers and
The beggars.
Only the fortune tellers,
Remain.

Sitting aloof, without
Shuffling their tarot cards.
Making no efforts to appeal
To the passers-by.

I don't know what happened
To all those seekers who
Wanted their hands read,
All the time.

Did everyone who sought
Got their fortunes,
And forgot this emissary
Of the lord?

What's the thickness of
Poverty to have them
Believe in astrology? I ask
With my eyes as I pass.

He vents a puff from the
Unlit bidi to point me,
At his parrot-less cage

And empty pockets-

To say that he was the
Only believer left.

Lonely introspection

A TV running blank in the 

Empty house and the 

Incandescent bulb burning

Without purpose.

There's a stool. Two shoes,

That avoid eye contact.

An old telephone hanging

In the air by the spring-cord.

A man past his fifties has

Cut his face in half, holds it,

Like bowl of soup- to search 

Meaning of life with a spoon.

When the only conversation

All day has been a dry fart

In response to a cold sigh.

The loneliness like a-

Drop of sweat goes down

The trails of his spine to talk

To someone- only to get

Choked in the ass. 

Alas! Hips. 

Why can't you talk?

Critics

I sit on the floor to
Mindlessly scribble.
The mosquitoes attack
Me like puny critics.

It's like a preventive
Attack by state agents,
To control supposed
Damage in the future.

Instead of putting my
Pen to work.
I keep flapping my
Notebook to crush
Them, between pages.

The blood splatter
And black pigment
Of the gut,
Smudge of their
Bodies..
Spread on paper-

Almost looks like
Unintended piece
Of painting.
Like modern art,
The meaning of which
Only the artist knows.

The abstract of it
Screaming, at me-
To take vows of
Silence and
Give up any form
Of expression.

But something in me
Waits for more colors to 

Draw better allegories.

And just then I see
A housefly come flying
Towards me.

Corporatization of a poem

The streetlights, 

Have replaced the place

Reserved for the moon
In my poems.

The gentle wind in the
Second-stanza had to be
Put to some use-
So the windmills been
Put up to generate 

A side income.

And in the groove of 

This verse you wanna 

Fall in-

The roads aren't tattered,
Reveries are marked
And named.
The question of getting
Lost had to be a
Guided miscalculation.

The straight trees are cut
To floor homes with
Safe bunkers-
The insecurities in
The penultimate stanza
Had to be eliminated.

The real estate boom
In the following stanzas-
The humble homes have
Been replaced by lonely
Apartment rooms.

The corporatization of 
This poem inflated the
Price per carpet area of
The words anyway.

So the predatory-loans
From China, that had

To be borrowed, are 
Gonna whisper Mandarin,
In the space between
These lines henceforth.

And if you're gonna put
Efforts to decipher
The metaphors,
You shall be called
A commie, to be put up
In a house arrest.

The audacity

The audacity of periwinkles

Growing up from the cracks
In the concrete walls.

The audacity of rats cutting,
The wires of ultrasonic repellent,
For the very purpose, it was brought.

The audacity of dogs barking,
Bulls openly mating and crows
Stealing rotis without our notice.

The audacity of the pigeon crossing,
The barbed wires to poop on
The fuelled up tanks.

The audacity of yourself in the
Mirror. The nation is in a crisis.
How dare you smile?

Russian Chirps

All night he moans out

Of pain, my ailing father.

Then in the morning,

Stands in the backyard,

On his crippled leg..

Waiting for the 

Yellow-backed sparrows.

How he tells everyone

Who comes to meet him.

That the little ones

Visit him every September,

All the way from Russia.

He references his inference

To planetary motion and 

An ancient number theory.

But who cares from where

Or how they come right?

As he stands there 

Grappling with whatever

Life he is left with.

Forgetting pain with

A bag full of feed for

The migratory birds.

Maybe they talk to

Him in Russian.

Narrating the stories

Of Chekhov, Tolstoy 

Or Orwell.

For all the time he

Has served in the army,

Driving Russian tanks.

Even if he thinks,

This daily respite as

A therapy sanctioned

By Vladimir Putin.

There's nothing wrong.

Surveillance

The wet stink of dog skin, 

Fresh ooze of crimson red,
Mixed in half-burnt soot
Of human hair.

The pitch dark of the
Night that hides the
Dry stare of imminent
Death.

The fear that creeps in
The thigh bones, the terror
Seeping into the nose
Through the thicked air.

Walking upright is an
Achievement.
Our Survival demands
Silence..

The bullets, as they hail
Detecting even a bit of
Louder thoughts.
Take these gags-

Suppress the muffling
Of those ideas.
We don't want you to
Die in this regime.

Poet

The old photo frames,

With their tattered
Black and whites, still
Try to be relevant.

The fake plastic trees,
That sit in the showcase,
Mock the houseflies,
In an attempt to ooze life.

Dust ridden trophies
Looking down on the
Broken toys still seem
To be haughty and proud.

The dried flowers,
Stripped off of all fragrance,
Still peeking from the corner,
To lure the bees in vain.

And I'm sitting here,
Judging them all,
Trying to gather up all
Ill-fated words to prove..

That I'm a goddamn
Poet at last.

Sacked City

The empty jhulas swing back and forth,
Above the cold embers of half-doused fire.

The sunsets today seem to smother,
The whiteness of the lilies that want to be born.

The stony silence of the resolute men,
Melt away hopes of the little ones and

The grief of mothers pit against the
Distant peaks like wingless butterflies..
In an attempt to assuage the injured kids.

A vast expanse of dusk covers the torsos,
Searching for their severed heads and
The silence that covers is so terrible-

Even hyenas are shedding real tears for
Their inability to feed on the human Caracas.

And to the onslaught of plundering savages-
The God's beseech for forgiveness from the dead,
For not being able to carry out the final rites.

The dark is so deep, amidst the unlit pyres,
There might not be a dawn to the demised tale-

Of this midnight.

Apathy and Devotion

With the glut of prayers,
Temples are crowded.
The walls of the
Sanctum are tired.

The bells having worked,
Without respite, want to
Shed their weight,
On someone's shoulder.

But atheists are not
Allowed to be involved.

So every time, someone
Rings the bells to offer
Prayers to the lord-
Before they reach him,

They're being absorbed
By the walls.

Nauseated by the soot
Of the oil lamps,
The Lord hides in the dark,
Like a deaf commander-

In seek of rest from his
Seekers' relentless asks.

Chappal

Made of rough fabric,

Brown, size eight.

Off the main road,

By the Banyan tree,

A chappal sits, sullen.

In misery.

Thrown out off the 

Temple yard, kicked out 

To the sidelines, don't know

By how many.

A tramp in rags,

Picks up the discarded,

Measuring her against 

His foot.

And the kids laugh

As he walks, wearing,

An unsuitable match.

That's how it is,

Recycling, is bad 

For capitalism anyway.

For the religion,

It's widow remarriage.

Man's Oldest Friend

So we grab you when 

You're just a puppy. 

We feed you, nurse you. 

Cuddle and sometimes clean 

Your shit. Then let you be in

Our family portraits.

We put on a leash, to let you

Roam at our will.

So you can jump, run and

Drag us to heaven and hell.

And when you have urges and

In seek of a mate, if you

Go on smelling genitals in

The streets. How dare you?

How dare you, 

Hop on the females? 

How dare you,

Publicly display affection?

Your sex drive doesn't 

Suit our morals you silly.

You need to comply to

Fall in our norms.

Here's what we shall do,

Let's sterilize or castrate you.

Even if you wanna procreate 

To take further your lines.

Then let's choose the best,

To engineer the cute ones..

When we say, 

Selective breeding is the best.

You should believe us as we've 

Always catered to your interests.

After all, you're humankind's

Earliest friend.