Male line Inheritance

Every Sunday, your wife tries
To prepare Kheer, just like
Your mom once did.
It falls short of something
Every time.

Your face assumes the same
Stroke of disappointment
Your father's did, when
Your mom failed to recreate
Your Grandma's kheer.

You think of breaking the loop
After such a realization.
But after looking at your son
Enjoying the same Kheer,
You let him have the opportunity-

Of learning the art of gaslighting
That runs patriarchy.

A Perfect Transition

Triple riding, one beer to drink
At the empty real estate by
The highway.
The papadi, pickle sachet
And other cheap snacks
And lots of laugh in the
Dead of the night.

Light drizzle, and then food
At Rajasthan dhaba.
Meaningless talks, euphoric
Recollection of memories
In a loud voice.

Heading back at 2 am with a
Backache, tired eyes and
Sweaty disgust of summer.
Hating your steamed-up little
Room, spreading a mat on
The terrace in haste and falling
Asleep in the moonlight.

That sounds like a perfect
Transition of the evening into
Night.

Giving it back

Your father beats you up for
Getting beaten up by the bullies
In the school.
He advises you to throw stones
At anyone who bothers you.

It begins with dogs at first.
The pigs, cattle, and cows.
Not the bullies yet but other
Meek ones, as you wanted to
Be a bully yourself.

The harmless teacher gets
This one time. And your
Aunt gets it over a sarcastic
Comment.

The insecurity in the head gets
Manifestated in hand forever,
The supposed 'give it back'
Becomes an act of expression,
To cause unnecessary harm.

You're past the 'eye for an eye'
Thing, as everyone now is blind.
But the empty hand and your
Devil's Workshop, are compelled
To turn inward..

But who gouged your eyes?

Apparition

Your mother works in a dingy

Brothel of Kamathipura.

And each morning calls you by

The name of her previous client.

The day she uttered your 

Real name, you stood in front 

Of the mirror, to embrace yourself

Unapologetically.

And while you looked yourself 

In the eyes, the fickle alleys 

Forced into you a question-

'Who really was the client?'

Cycle

There's no secret but to wait.

Till the sand-dial settles grain by grain,
And is turned up upside down to
Do it all over again.

Drop by drop, the lake fills itself
And dries up to repeat the process.
Time is a sculptor in pursuit of an
Angel stuck in a rock.

Time is a musician trying to hear
His own patience for a serendipitous life.
So the way forward is always wearing
Tearing and rebuilding again.

Time is a ruthless, unbiased invader.
Painful for someone and a pleasure
For someone else and within a
Short while it'll reverse the roles again.

Like tearing down a mountain into
A plain somewhere and elsewhere
Gets beneath a valley to
Punch it up again.

Time fancies a rollercoaster ride,
The repeated ebbs and flows in
The fabric of space, screaming births
And deaths like bursting balloons

In a birthday party of a kid.

My empty rooms

My own empty rooms, I'm unable to
See. Unable to stick a broom to clean.
Flickers of light that refuse to reach
And I never know what's there or
What's not lurking?

Someone comes along sometimes
To open a couple of them,
Switch on the lights and sweep them
Clean and ask for matchsticks to
Prepare tea.

Years back there was a late-night party
In a couple of them.
The smokey smell of a campfire
Still remains but has been left
Unattained ever since.

These places without people are
Handicapped geographical coordinates
It seems. The numbness here grows
Shouting the absence of human touch,
So that no ship and compass
Can ever reach.

But the dried-up rivers show up to
Salvage their tragedies somehow.
And return in pity after seeing
The cataclysm that's already brewing.

Overlooking

The tree of longing that I
Watered, all these years.
Stout, lush green, supposed 

To bear fruits.

When it sulked without flowers.
The wait seemed strenuous and
I had to axe it up into bits to
Burn it piece by piece.

Now I celebrate the smoke
That's stuck around,
The pungence, the cough,
Irritation in the eyes.

But I somehow expect the songs
Of the birds that once nested
In the green shoots.

I hear and see some things that
Seep in from the cracks.
Overlooking the fact that
It's just a mirage.

Shitty Faces

They take us to an old age home
As a part of the college curriculum.
Some girls sing and make them play
Merry games. Tell them how great
They're and blah blah blah.

They must see plenty of jokers
Like us who visit them daily to
Feel good about oneself.
Maybe the oldies all gather up in
The evening to rate our shitty faces.

The best one is kept in mind
For manifestation when they're
Constipated the next morning.

Two stars

The night that you were born,
'Two stars died'. Your grandpa said
That repeatedly over the years.

The counterfactuals you learn
As you grow old.
The twinkling phenomenon,
The nebula, supernova and
The light-year distance.

On the day of his demise,
You approach his stout body
While women sat around crying.
You touch his feet for one
Last time to pay homage.

And whisper in the ears,
"Guess two stars are born tonight".
It seemed like his lips realigned
Into a crooked smile in approval.

And the stars far away in the
Distance said WTF in their language
And farted together in a fury,
Which lasted longer than
Human history.

Freedom of Confines

Hate this room, hate this life.

Need a final escape-
Emancipation for good.
So the chair that warmed your ass,
Facilitates one final climb and doesn't
Hesitate to topple this time.

The noose tightens around
Your neck. Eyeballs pop out,
Tongue sticks between the teeth
And the drool off your mouth
Greases the rusty ribs, so that

The soul could escape without grate.

The legs sway rapidly, and
The hands try to conjure help for
One last time but the feather-like
Beast, your soul, is already on
Its maiden flight- Only to get stuck in
The cobwebs in the upper right
Corner of your room.

'One prison' pushing you into another.
'The beyond' you sought now
Stares at the chair you had toppled.

And the ass-less soul misses
Its cozy warmth and the freedom
That was within the walls.

Gap in Your Name

Your parents fought hard to
Settle on a common name for you
After your birth.

As a compromise your dad
Prefixed you secretly after his ex.
Coincidentally your mom was

Relieved to know that the suffix
Rhymed with the one she once
Crushed on in school.

So you have two nicknames now
That are distinctively uttered by a
Male and a female in your home.

And the syllable that holds together
The divide in your name sits
Overstretched in silence, and that

Pretty much sums up
The life you've had till now.

Orphan?

What if you were born as a girl and
Your father abandoned your mom
For not birthing a boy?

She couldn't return to her maiden home
Out of shame and left you at a
Temple door to jump in a well.

The childless priest raises you as his
Own and years later when you wash
The stairs of the temple, as a morning ritual..

You feed a hungry old man who was
Kicked out of his home by his son.
A thought crosses your mind to make you

Wonder if you're an adopted orphan..
Then the temple bell rings after the aarti
To bring you back to your senses.

Shudra

The usual dogs go barking in
A condescending tone.
The fat zamindar walks around
Staring, to detest our shadows
In front of his home.

Most refuse to offer us water
And even the virtuous ones serve,
Low-grade beverages in discarded
Cups that are kept outside their
Thresholds, which scream-

Our untouchability, as we're born
Out of the feet of the same God
They worship.
So much hate for a little foot fetish,
That the roads of our streets are..

Deliberately bent away from all the
Temples in the village, to protect
Their religious sanctity.

The intention of our thirst is questioned
At every pond and borewell too.
And even the nature of protein in our food
Comes out as a national issue.

Then the silent gag on our mouths,
The voice stuck like a wad in our throats..

We try to put warm-salt-water to
Gargle it out every election.
But all we can muster up is a
Bad cough that is often syruped down
By luring our votes for money and alcohol.

The Caged Bird

You'll be convinced that flying is an

Illness to be pushed in a cage.

Your songs will be beaten into submission 

Saying singing is a sinful disgrace.

Your dreams will be kept for display as

Ceramic cups to serve tea to guests.

Aspirations will be caged in a Saree,

In the name of a makeover.

They'll come at you one by one,

They'll be invited in fact to rate your gait.

And your body will be judged to be

Traded like a slave.

The forehead will be used as an 

Estate to flaunt ownership in Red.

You'll be awarded a uniform that's 

Widely recognised as a gown, to

Condemn you to a kitchen.

Cutting vegetables, preparing rotis.

Only after the third whistle of the cooker, 

Your presence will be felt.

The caged bird in our country, 

Can't even sing you see, she can just cook.

You either die as a Sanskari wife or 

Live long enough to be aborted in the womb.

Between the two, if you dare to grow 

Wings, you'll be deemed as a curse. 

And If you're 'manly' enough to fly, 

It can get worse.

Aging

Chaos in my head is a complex
Network of drains intermingled so
Haphazardly that, I never know what
Comes in and what goes out.

It's like a slime mold spreading
Across a substratum, feeding and
Growing at the same time and occupying
Space to become one with the host.

It's a riot really. An angry mob in
Search of free will and my
Conscious self, a dictator who wants
To bring order.

And every time there's a police firing
There's a hairafall.
Use of water canons- there goes
Another wrinkle on the face.

Childhood was unhinged democracy
An experiment to figure out what's
Right, what's not.
Adulthood seems to be an autocracy,
The rebellion for change goes for
A toss to accommodate self-acceptance.

Old age is holding the free bird by
The neck to clip its wings and
The funeral of a flight trickles down
The bald head like it was a chain of
Command from someone above.

Roaches

Your warm breath erases my
Love letters written on cold,
Foggy windows... The sea waves
Mock the sand castles and
Take back what's rightfully theirs.

My longing rises like ash from
A funeral pyre but the bruises
Of waiting all day long don't
Douse or die.

The unwounded skin screams
For attention and all I have
Are empty rivers and it hasn't
Rained here in a while.

The only intimacy I've had with
Myself, is a stress-driven streak of
Nail biting and hopeless visibility of
Fallen hair on the floor for
Disappointment, each morning.

I sweep it every night with the broom
To forget. But what can be done
With the dust that sticks to the broom?
The nightmares are roaches that
Choose to stick.

Self-Loathing-Cannibalistic-Vegan

From childhood, I was warned
Against biting my nails saying
They would germinate in my belly to
Grow as a giant try to feed on me.

Though that gave me nightmares
Somehow, my fingers find my
The famished mouth even now.

So that's me, savoring the
Forbidden kingdom of dirt beneath
My fingernails. Sometimes even
The hardened skin around the edges-
I'm a giant who eats himself.

That's a low-key introduction of
Myself for the role of a side villain
In Tolkien's novel. What can that be
Called in a modern lingo?
A self-loathing-cannibalistic-vegan?

The vegan part is kept to trigger
A wokist dispute for that time in
The future where eating plant-based
Stuff would be cruel and you gotta eat
Yourself or your progeny, to not get
Cancelled.

Eventuality..

The fresh absence when a
Father dies,
Loudness of the vacuum..
No one wants to sit on his
Chair.

The air tries to occupy
The void after a few days.
Muffled sounds and feeble
Brush of music.

The first sweets prepared
After his demise, and
For the first time your mother
Hesitantly smiles.

One afternoon, your son would
Sit on that chair and
Years later, his grandson
Shall forget his
Great grandfather's name.

Third Whistle

It's ten past seven in the evening,

Her weary sandals take a hesitant 

Refuge besides the stingy shoes.

The saree retires to the wardrobe,

And the withered jasmines,

Part ways from her braids.

Her body is transferred to

Another uniform- a gown.

Then the vegetables are cut,

Rotis are prepared and only when 

The third whistle of the cooker 

Screams to the appeals of

The hungry stomachs..

For a brief while, everyone feels,

Her presence.

Why shouldn't it Rain?

She dances in the crowd holding
Her skirt and I feel teased.
She's like hope of rain in my desert
Of solitude and for the fleeting desires
In my heart, why shouldn't it rain?

For the last leaf that flirts with
Unfinished hopes, and the overbearing
Clouds that want to pour down.
For the earth that needs to be ploughed
And the hunger that needs to be fed.

For a longing unquenched and
Songs unsung. For the wayfarer
That hasn't reached and the night
Un-spent waiting. For the unfulfilled
Waves of the sea and premature
Death of some beliefs.

Why shouldn't it rain to reassure
The worthiness of the wait and
Sweetness of the quench when
The water has been scarce.

Man-childs

It all starts with some hopeless
Idealism when you're a teen.
Then you together read
'Motorcycle Diaries' and dream big.

But life isn't a movie like ZNMD,
Not sure who was gonna be Kabir
But you eventually turn out to be Irfan
With damnation of poetry.

The two of you lose that third-wheel
And get condemned to be just two.
The dream of forming a band is
Still incomplete, a business at least
In the near future, seems just an
Utopian wish.

But the supposed low-key Arjun
Buys a bike and you get to travel
Across Himalayas. Only that
Happens to have some meaning
In your half-baked life.

You go on a drinking frenzy one night
With this more than a friend
And less than wife nigga, thinking
That's how you end it like you're
In a Tarantino tragedy.

But your goodbyes are somehow
Saved like renewed man-child characters
In another Imtiaz Ali movie.

Necrosis

Yes, we lack purpose, hate loving.
Despise living and love the dark,
Against all social norms.
But don't call us dead yet.

The heart might not be beating in
Lieu with your scales.
Breath might not be in and out
In accordance with your cues,
As we're not slaves.

The wings flutter erratically
The thoughts derange and paths
Often change. But we're trying..

Lips are a few inches wider,
If that's what you call a smiling.
There's a small bulb light always
These days as you're afraid of me
In the dark.

I'm trying to die a little less these days.
The mutilated nose is growing back,
And the twisted feet are turning around.
Necrosis is failing and my friends in
Hell smell the stink of betrayal.

Goodbye Chester, Goodbye Willis,

Goodbye you son of a gun, Hemingway.

 
The golden drop of life still seems
To be waiting for me she says.
So I refuse to die this evening per se.

Self-

The self wanders, takes a walk,
Goes on hikes and on rainy days
Hops on untrodden paths to
Get lost for good.

Gets twisted, and stabbed in all gore.
Obliterated to dust and ash.
And each night after work,
You gotta pray, conjure and
Force it down in the confines of
Yourself to love, hate and abuse
It to keep it around.

It needs coaxing, cajoling and
Appeasing and lots of pampering.
Self is a cougar who thinks she's
In a teenage body. A gigolo who
Assumes he's a warrior's daddy.

It fleets without fidelity and
Decays fast to the cues of inevitability.
The self can become a drunken sailor
Who gambles his fate for a
Cheap bottle of rum to sink the ship
Where there's no water..

So you need to be at the helm

As a captain always, like Jack Sparrow.

Though drunk and losing control but

Playfully enough to keep the heart intact 

Even when you're lost.

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.

First Mango of the Season

When the mango trees flower
By the start of April.
The taste buds on the tongue start
A revolt to have a taste of
The first ripened mango of
The season and they don't
Let you wait.

You pluck those tiny-bud-like
Mangoes in pursuit of your
Craving and you keep doing that
Compulsively till you find that
Final emancipating taste.

You go climbing trees and
Hitting private farms in summer
Holidays with all your harmless
Childish face but the owner
Chases you away.

You collect unripe mangoes from
The roadside to keep them for
Fruition in the paddy husk and
You don't have the patience to leave
Them to the forces of nature.

So you press them a couple of
Times a day to see if they're
Magically ripe and sometimes
The squishy pulp of the unripe ones
Makes you believe that it's ready,
Before it explodes its foul taste
In your mouth as a cold revenge.

But that's the grind right?
You chase around restlessly,
For that one over-aged ovary.
And when you find one, you peel
The skin and lick it well first.
Feed on the pulp and suck on
The stone till it's core is visible
And then play all day with the fibers
That get stuck in your teeth.

The Widow Maker

She breaks the bangles of women
Who's husbands die.
She rubs their vermillion-laden
Maang and wraps around them
A white saree like it's a shroud
To condemn them for life.

She herself is a widow,
She can't look someone in the eye.
Her shadow is forbidden on the kids
And they don't let her walk around
When the newlywed couples arrive.

In the seventh house on the fourth
Street of the village, she too
Has a humble life.
The smell of her sambar makes it
The streets daily twice,
There's hope in the bright eyes of
Her only child.

But more often than not, everyone
Tries to remind her of the closed
Paths to her maiden home and the
Jasmines in the backyard she can
Never have.

The last soft touch of her deceased
Husband crosses her mind sometimes,
Only to grip her with the cold
Hesitant hands of another woman,
Who wrapped what's left of her life in
A white saree, to make her a mere

Body of the walking dead.

One that's Supposed to come

Where's the one that's supposed
To come before it's late?
Where's the one 'I would know'
Upon her arrival and by now,
It seems it's too late.

Wide awake, I wait, for this wayfarer,
Sometimes questioning the sanctity
Of my eyes, and sometimes
The intentions of the paths that
Lead up to my house.

Sometimes stability of the lamp
That keeps flickering to the deceptions
Of the winds, and sometimes 

The sanity of clouds that keep 

Masking the polestar.

I re-oil the lamp, pray for kinder
Paths and prostrate before the
Winds invoking ancient chants.
But there haven't been any signs..

The Lotus I brought droops and
Retires to forests and the songs of
The Sparrows dissolve in the air
For it didn't find a beholder.

Seasons are tired, decades have
Passed. Lamps have made way to
The LED lights and the warfarers now
Are vloggers with Google Maps.

Yet, there haven't been any omens
But the wait hasn't stopped.

The heart seems condemned to be
Unfulfilled, like an unplayed guitar.
But the urge to compose songs renews
Each day like periwinkles in an old
Cement wall.

We're are all Bukowski's Poems

We're all Bukowski's poems,
Stolen from the rawness of stingy
Beer bottles and crotches of whores
Bedding his sadness.

The illegible bloodshed on tissue,
Left unread beneath a park bench and
The one lost to chance while he typed
On inkless ribbons.

We're all Bukowski's poems escaped
For good when he poured rum on his
Bluebird to keep it hidden in his ribs
And goodbye to his broken car,
Sent prematurely to salvage.

Fifty miles from nowhere at Twelve past
Twelve and coffee mixed taste of a cigar.
A twenty-year-old with a 9 mm waiting
To reconsider his options for one last time.

Sleep wanting a cigarette break-
Life coming alive in the dead of the night.
Swollen fingers compulsively pressing
The keys of the typewriter in an
Attempt to erase his suicide letters.

We're all Bukowski's poems, blamed
For crudity and lack of aesthetics-
'Burning in water and drowning in flame.'
Trying to stay relevant in specific niches,
Like 'Love being a Dog from hell.'

Urge

I wish I could walk past that
Dungeon but this urge to jump
Because she's beautiful..
The mole on her right cheek
And the blush that goes with
The shine of her eyes.

I'm already a slave of the swish
Of wind that's blowing past.
There's a winter crawling under
My skin and a cherry blossom in
The aridity of my heart.

I know in my head that this is
Just a hormonal act but there's
This desire to get myself stabbed..
Smash open my smothering walls
And take a plunge to give away
Everything to chance..

I bet many chose better wars.
Wet paint, guns, and fast cars.
And there are other ways to die
But this urge to drown in her eyes..🤌

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.

Passing Precedents

They break and bend the joints.

Bathe the body and tie the neck

Against the wall to make it sit

On a wooden cot.

Women cry their hearts out.

They have to.

Men can't, they've to pretend

To attend to other chores.

Some gather bamboo to make

'Sidagi', some warm their drums

For a loud announcement.

Some wait for the alcohol.

Kids from the sidelines wonder 

About everyone's mixed behavior.

They're hungry but gotta tolerate it.

By this late in the noon, they too-

Understand that food can't be

Cooked in their house of the dead.

Sidagi- a carrier for dead body till the graveyard

Harbinger

The first time you learn to make

A kite and fly it. You get wings.

You're a low-key unlicensed pilot.

The first time you feel that air in

Your ears when recklessly peddle-

A heavy dirt track rider.

You fall in love and trace a line of 

Romance on the desk. The touch

Of love and stuff, you're the poet 

Plato once talked about.

And you almost found gravity 

After you see that jackfruit fall,

So to hell with Newton and his laws.

You somehow fixed the radio,

Carried a rice bag beyond your

Body weight ratio. You skipped school, 

Went around the village, climbed trees 

To steal mangoes. You explored.

You the sailor, voyager, the risk taker,

You freaking Ferdinand Megalan.

And the Spiderman for saving

The falling pickle jar.

Who ever lights the lamp in the dark

Is an inventor of fire.

You once lit up a hut in the farm,

You're harbinger of civilizational wars.

Barefoot

To all those roads I walked 

Barefoot, when any sort of a
Footwear was a sign of luxury.

The shrubs we invaded and
The trees we climbed to eat fruits.
The thorns that we stepped
Over that got till the bones.

And all those bored grannies,
In the noon, sorting groundnuts,
Keen on digging into your foot to
Liberate you from the nosy guest
With their safety pins.

The cashews you collected that
Summer, you sold for sixty per kg,
To buy yourself a pair of Paragon
Slippers. It's a long way you've
Come from there.

But even then, when the 8 am
Bus from native leaves to your
Mom's village-
The hot soil and unintended
Sharp black stones on
The kaccha roads call you.

And you feel a brief shudder in
Feet and the soles of the footwear
You now wear shy away a little.

Lists

I gotta get my hair cut, gotta stop
Biting my nails. Sometimes hopes
Pumped up, I put up in my list that I
Should get a passport and a nice car
To travel across the mountains and the world.

Then there are days I've to deliberately
Remind myself to take a bath, shed the sugar
And take long noon naps as nights are
Already fucked. That's cold steel of
Self-actualization after looking at my wallet.

Sometimes there's a to-do list to wake up,
Sleep, read and write. And other things
That I think matter, to impact what course
Of Geographical timeline, I don't know.

But many times my lazy streaks run wild.
Nothing happens on those. No lists,
No goals. Only some hazy reminders
To not kill myself and jerk off less.

The insurance, taxes, room rent and
The unwashed clothes on empty chairs.
The trekking trails that mock my tiring legs
And the other stuff in a book with the bucket list
That I haven't Ticked off in five years-
It's exhausting.

A house, a marriage, a big fat salary and
Gifts for themselves, those who expect these
Vanities. Someone said I gotta plan a
Funeral too and design myself a tombstone.

My single room is small enough and heats up
So much in the summer that I've got an

Epitaph written already and I'm in search of
Someone who can write an eulogy.

If you have it in you, come up dear as the final 

Nail in the coffin.

Meeting You Outside Poetry

You would have imagined me through
My poems, like I've after reading yours.
And if you ever meet me outside our poetry-

You'll be surprised to know that I've
A dialect that comes clean as an ooze of
Blood and the clarity of English on paper
Dies in the clutter of my mouth.

The feminism in my lines struggles to
Fit within the edges of soft chauvinism,
The romantic idealism chokes itself when
A beggar asks me for a rupee or two.

The ease of love often meets my
Desperation on my forehead at obtuse 

Angles and my confidence goes to toss
Seeking refuge in the imposter syndrome.

I can't take a compliment too you know,
That's when my tattered sarcasm
Comes alive and the way I talk about
Other's eyes, I can't make an eye contact.

My conversation would be a skewed 

Brawl between my body and soul,
Words may come out with an awkward growl.
And bisecting the aftermath of this

If you choose to say that you're just
'A poem' extending your hand and I might 

Realize where you come from and say 

'Me too', shaking your hand.

Forbidden Love

I try to conjure you by
The old tricks of black magic-
Lemons, green chilies,
An inlay of said patterns laid
On the floor with chanted Ash
From the ancient temple of a
Furious goddess.

Vermillion and turmeric in
Excess to throw around when
Confused with the procedure.
Capturing the full moon in
Jinxed water, I invoke your name
In what I think is Sanskrit.

A crow comes flying after
A short while to sit around.
The Tantrik had given a clear
Prophecy that,
The bird would be you.

I build you a nest and buy
You a make-up set.
You leave no attempt to make
Yourself, extra bit of fair.
But they now, say that, how
A white crow is a disgrace.

Many disapprove this mess,
Saying how inter-species marriage
Is such a ninth-degree offense.
But true love is blind you see,
We don't care... to all incoming
Criticism we invoke, the fifth.

You say caw-caw, I say
Love you too.
We talk about having our kids
Or maybe just hatch some
Cuckoo's eggs.

This is a divine-sanctioned
Madness, our love, you say and
The inter-genus Gods witness
The fantasy to shower us with grace.

Longing

Longing is a 2 am song with
Unclear lyrics, hailing like nails
On your skin to stop you from
Having an eyeful of sleep.

Longing is a ship wanting to
Leave the shore but the anchor
Is on an undeclared holiday,
And there's an embargo now.

It's a feather traveling from
The lands far away to rest
On your chest to eat the light
In your room, with its heaviness.

It's a hammer confined within
Cement walls, trying to break out-
The desperation sinking an
Inch deep after each thump.

Longing is a bottle with an
Age-old letter sent to a bird that
Never responds, and on the other
End, another waiting forever-

For the letter that never comes.
The sea-waves try to take it
To the distal ends of the beach
But falls short each time and

Is forced to recede.
This un-fulfillment,
Tears shouting in your eyes,
Making the lashes just moist.

The wail that's supposed to
Come crashing down stays
There like a pretending cat.
Longing is the words that turn

Thick in your throat. The sighs,
Soaked in the dryness of mouth.
The blood that refuses to ooze,
Even when cold edges of

A Swiss knife hail on soft
Contours of your wrists.

Mirror

What if the mirror comes
Alive and you met your
Reflection in real-time.
Would you love him or hate?

The tunnel of vision staring
Down that abyss of yours and
The abyss looking back at you,
To get on your nerves.

The cascade of conflicting
Thoughts battling nastily to
Expose the dirt you're.
Your own self-negation singing
Threat to your questionable
Existence.

The way you're exposed,
Would you kill yourself out of
Shame or you would attack
The other for showing you
The mirror? Or you'd just choose

To gulp your insecurities to
Bear his mocking smile and
Go, hug him to accept it all?
Would you make peace with
This miserable better half to 

Marry him into a compromise?

Are you brave enough to accept 

Yourself to carry on with life?

Love a thing or two

You must love a thing or two,
One over the other, the other
Over another, till the grit of longing,
Bruises the walls of your
Heart and demands for
The pleasure of scratching a
Half healed scar.

Like a flower leaving a fragrance
With a tinge of lavender,
The moon, making you forget
That his beauty is just a reflection.
The rain, compelling the desert
To sprout grass and the inability of
A dreamer to be sane even
For a night.

Like sleeplessness perching
You down into the submission
Of vulnerability and kindness
Winning a rigged combat without
The need for bloodshed.
The mountains calling you out
In the wake of a snowfall and
The rain-soaked roads leading
You up to a picturesque waterfall.

You gotta give in, to something
At some point of time.
Sometimes over a sparrow or
A cat. Over your own image
Or that of a lovely dog.

There will not be an obvious choice,
But you must choose a thing or two,
To bruise the walls of your heart,
To have a scratch-able old scar,
To somewhere truly belong.

Not About Dying.

So the nooses fail and the vehicles
Refuse to run over. Veins, coated
With steel, the blood doesn't ooze,
And the brain doesn't explode.

The writer of my fate somehow
Forgets to forge me a tragic end,
His writer's block must be serious,
Maybe I should lend him my technique.

There's so much at stake here,
The share in my ancestral property
My siblings might want,
The insurance companies, wanting

To declare that I'm a fraud.
The Taaviz of a Tantrik going unsold
Because my ghost can't make any
Noise in the night and

My wife, not getting a chance to
Play her ultimate victim card.
More importantly, the crows with
A fetish for funeral-food -

Returning to the virtue of stealing
Rotis from the backyards, after
Being deprived of the delicacies
At the wake of my demise. 

This liveliness keeps punching
Holes in my shroud and I manage to
Keep stitching it back with
Self-deprecating nylon jokes.

And it's bloody adamant, this life,
Infects with reason and a bit of
Purpose and lots of cowardice
To keep my breathing intact.

But living seems to be the biggest
Addiction we suffer as a species it seems.
And you're wrong if you think this
Rant is just about dying.

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.

The Houses we don't leave

The first one I fell for at 

The age of sweet thirteen,

Had short hair, wore her

Skirt below the knee.

The second one after 

Two years, when she looked 

At me thrice and the guys  

Teased me with her name.

The third one at the rush
Of sixteen, when the absolute
Bomb of my class wished me for
The exams with a shake hand.
Then her letters found a way
To my home that summer holiday.
SMS in the first-ever mobile I got.
She changed the school after that
And that's that.

The intense one was after

The school. I fell for my

Best friend. A situation ship,

Friendzone and a long streak

Of emotional fog and my

Break down in Goa before

I moved on.

The best one came after a

Really long gap.

The sweetest ever really.

She was always there.

Called me cute even through

My shabbiness. She tickled my 

Imagination to weave me

Stories of fantasy.

We traveled, hiked and

Saw dreams as meteors showed 

In the Himalayan skies.

But some shooting stars were 

Angry it seems. This time, 

I fucked up and I was back to 

The blankness I deserved.

The one that got to my head

Came briefly after that.

It was brief really, there wasn't

Even a proper story.

We talked in poems and 

Cuss words of fancy and 

She often refused to tell me

About her ailment, yet left

Me enough hints.

She ghosted me after a year 

And before I felt like an ass,

Her sister sent me a text,

Saying, her sister passed away

That morning.

I didn't know what to do,

Except to leave the matter

There and punish myself

With the guilt that followed.

I flutter my wings even today

But always in apprehension

Of the anti-climactic flight

I might make.

So I sit here in my nest, brooding,

Thinking about those houses

That turn into cemeteries

When we don't leave.

Sit Straight Doll

I'll write you a poem doll,

Sit straight.

When I compare your nose

To the beak of a parrot

And those lips to the juicy

Slices of orange, don't laugh.

That's how poems were

Written back then.

I'll compare your neck to

The lake I once visited

In the Himalayas and those 

Slender hands to the soft embrace 

Of clouds that shower grace.

Eyes can't be left out right?

They of course are oceans

As the cliches go. But do I

Wanna drown and die there? 

You decide, if you wanna

Kill me or just intoxicate.

The cheeks are cotton candy,

Feet invoke a fetish that

Gets to my head.

The boobies and butts are

Why I write poems and 

The way you smile when

I say that, let's finish this off 

And have a quick one.

And from your forehead

Our romance starts,

Hiking through the mountains,

And valleys, it's hard labor.

With a sigh of relief at your

Belly button before entering

The cave that's portrayed

In our movies as Snake and 

Eagle.

Ohh, sorry for the digression.

I forgot about the poem.

Sit straight again now, doll.

Should I begin from where 

I left or you want this all over 

Again?

Forty Thousand

At a friend's funeral, when 

Someone said it costs at least

Twenty thousand to say a 

Proper goodbye after death.

The Oldman was worried 

About the onus on his son.

He knew it all these days but

It hadn't hit him yet.

The forty-year daily laborer, 

His son, of whom he's very 

Protective of, he kept coming 

To his mind.

'How can he manage that

Hefty amount in a village?'

It was a rampage in his head

While he walked back from

The graveyard.

He had to take into account

His wife too-- forty thousand now.

He tried to recall, whatever

He had saved, failing to reach 

A definite figure.

The anxiety in head made 

The legs walk fast if not run.

Forgetting to wash his feet before

Entering his home after a burial.

He opened his box that was 

Kept in the dingy corner.

The rustle of notes failed to

Assure him, the amount of his

Estimation. Thirty thousand

More he said to himself and

The photo frame above him, 

Of Lord Kuber, seemed to 

Mock him with a beguiled smile.

Perception of Self

Not love but love like 

Experience. Not you but

Someone like you.

Orange-like juices, mango-like 

Flavors. Not the jasmine but 

Jasmine-like lavendars.

Everything is either a fancy 

Of calculation or at most a 

Guided miscalculation.

Like a theme park offering

Experience of a forest with

Different packages for 

The sea breeze and that of

Mountains.

We don't know what it's like

To be lost these days.

Through the unknown paths,

We don't know what it takes

To figure out our ways.

We don't know what we feel

About ourselves really, as

We've seen innumerable reels.

And we don't know what to

Feel about others as we've

Consumed content on DIY too.

Standing in front of the mirror,

With whispers of people

Who don't really matter.

You look at your reflection in

Contemplation, to assure yourself,

How you don't like the idea

Of you, in pursuit of someone

Like you.

A wife for someone like you,

A house for someone like 

You would have loved.

Before you transition into 

Someone else entirely, 

You still got time to exhume your 

Corpse from beneath these 

Layers of pretense.

Blow him to life, give him

A nice shower and buy a better

Mirror that can give away

A clean, naked image to save 

Yourself from a misdirection.

The Broken Heart

The broken heart is an 

Abandoned nest where 

No bird comes to rest.

The broken heart is a freshly 

Born desert where the greens 

Are scared to sprout.

With no desire to hunt or eat

Or a plan to patiently wait 

Or sleep. The broken heart 

Is a restless beast that's 

Mocked by even the petty prey.

An orphan, a tramp 

A tombstone with no one

Left to write an epitaph.

It's an empty bottle wanting 

To be filled by emptying 

Other bottles.

A conch shell on a secluded 

Beach that tries to amplify the wind 

In search of meaning.

But the music nonetheless,

Is hollow and bland.

A war-torn city in the forties,

Great Depression of the thirties.

A failed bank, even US refuses

To bail out because of the pain 

It carries.

Satan wants to develop

Here his real estate,

But the loneliness of this

Dingy Street, only hopeless

Romantics can tolerate.

So the heartbroken come here

To live rent-free for 

Assisted self-sabotage and 

Aid for sleep-deprived nights.

Cut off from the mainstream,

The broken heart is a 

A self-deprecated ghost town,

Ignored for good,

For the benefit of the people

Who can't handle reality.

Dystopia of a Poetry

A poem is a kid's persistence,

To have an elephant for 

Himself in his favorite bottle.

A poem is a lover's belief that

Even in Satan's heart, he can 

Manage to find her.

A poem is a battle against

The world to prove that unicorns

Are hatched out of eggs.

A poem is a the way midnight

Screams at an empty road

Without making any noise.

Silence of raindrops touching

The last leaf of a dying tree,

Crackle of dew settling on

In the Savannas after it was

Destroyed by the fire.

A poem is Grandmas eating

Chocolates without guilt,

Moms taking dance classes,

While cooking and nieces 

Forcing you to be a customer 

In their imagery restaurant.

A poem is a belief, a revolt.

A hope, a memory.

It's the sound of pain from

Epiglottis. Whispers of

Cussing in the rosary beads

Used for chanting.

It's anything really.

What you can write and 

What you can't. What you can

See and what you can't.

The long episodes of blankness,

Random streaks of lunacy.

Poems are overwhelmed

Emotions popping out like 

Popcorns. One by one you just 

Put them in your mouth to 

Watch this dystopian movie

Called life.

The Stalker

I listen to you across all
This distance. Sometimes
Pick hazy peeks from
Across the street.

The way you brush,
The way you flush.
The rustle of your hair
While you comb and
The silence of lipstick
On your juicy lips.

You wept yesterday I don't
Know why.
The shame in your eyes
While you stood naked in
Contemplation-
Sometimes I hear your
Silent prayers and I hope
That they're answered.

Also I think you're stuck
In that old playlist.
May I suggest you to listen to
'Billy Joel' now onwards,
But how should I communicate
That you?

You slam your stuff,
Especially your phone when
You're angry.
You've a bad temper you know.
After that an ant stung you
Yesterday, you shut those
Windows pretty hard too.
Don't do that, the curtains
Cuss you for slamming
Them hard.

Also you look frail,
Maybe you should consider
Eating an extra chapati
From now onwards.
Dieting has made you weak,
Your sleep cycle is already
A mess upon that.

I hear your blanket slide up
To your face.
Seems it's past midnight already.
I wish you don't switch off
That bulb in your room,
I'll not be able to see you now
From across the street.

Time to sleep anyway,
I'll have to get some of it.
Also I have to hear your dreams.
So good night 'Little Reindeer.'
Hope, I can assist you,
Through your nightmares
In sleep.

Certified Tragedy.

Wet paint of fresh dreams,
Spilling all over the floor,
And I slip off in the pool
Of colors in the morning.

Ahh! Too much happiness
For a single day.

Staying grounded is
Important today,
Give me a raft made out
Of little misery.

The nightmares are gonna
Hail heavily in the night
On the soft quilts of today
Morning.

I'm afraid of these random
Pleasures thrown at me,
Thinking, must be a coy
Sent to trigger my misery.

So I ignore sunsets and
Full moons and run away
From the flowers that
Are nothing but a boon.

Scared of warm smiles,
Free hugs-- I already expect
Malice in your eyes if you
Compliment me.

I suppose, either I take myself
Too seriously or don't bother
To care at all. I don't know where
The playfulness is gone.

For the overthought consequences
Of common possibilities.
I'm a long-standing deadlock
Between me and myself.

I'm an organically grown,
Certified tragedy.

Buddha in the Metaverse

Buddha in the metaverse is
A gangster from Regina Hills,
Who left his wife to force-feed
Meditation to the masses
Instead of two square meals.

Buddha in the metaverse is
Is a reformer who took Anguli Mal
Under his hood as he needed a
Henchman to build himself
A teflon image.

Fingers needn't be cut now
To threaten people.
Fear is instilled in their head,
To fall in compliance.

The mother who lost her son,
Wasn't sent to fetch mustard
From house with no deaths.
A communal angle was given
To it, to swing votes.

Our Buddha in the metaverse is
No more interested in Prakrit,
He's a steward of that one
Language that doesn't have
Any sanction and if you prefer
Your dialect over it, you're
Anti National.

Stretching the body on
A rock under a Banyan tree-
With man ki baat in Saranath
He exports his enlightened wisdom
To other countries.

He's waiting to declare himself
As another avatar of Vishnu,
But his department of narcissism
Doesn't let him lose or die,
So the incarnation for now is
Stuck in appeasing the camera.

Woman in Love

She'll brush your hair in
Slow motion and caress you
Into submission with her
Unsung lullabies.

She'll cut a pomegranate
On sunny afternoons,
And seed-by-seed feed
You by teasing you first.

She'll wear your formal
Shirt with proper tuck-in
And shoes, make herself
A moustache by pulling front

Her long strands of hair,
And will salute in attention
With a hard thump off
The right leg, to imitate you.

This woman in love, who
Can't write poems but is
Poetic enough-
With her carrot halwa and

Masala dosa, with a mouth
That always blabbers-
This woman in love wants you
To pretend like you're a kid.

But your un-shavable beard
Doesn't let you fiddle with
Your own innocence, and this
Absentee intimacy is

The bone of contention
In the bed.

Her Old Pic

You'll look at it and put it away.
You'll come back to it to
Never to look at it again, but
You gotta put it away.

A layer upon layer, hidden
Beneath the pile of lost
Emotions that still seem to
Be relevant.

Ready to lose a pound of
Flesh before giving up on
Her decade-old pic with
Your weakened will.

You'll have second thoughts,
And the third and the fourth
And several more before you
Tear it away.

And this girl in your head,
Who's now a full-grown woman,
Still knocks on your door only
To go away again.

Long lost, settled dust,
Demanding another pound
Of flesh before she sinks
Beneath a deeper layer...

Waits there in that tattered
Wallet, till you visit again.

It's Really Hard to Smile

The girl in front of me on the train,

Talks on the phone, looks in her bag,
Pretends to eat sometimes.
She looks away most of the time,
And hesitates to smile.

I try to find excuses to randomly
Meet her eyes but my lips
Evade the humble desire in
My heart, and maybe I look
Creepy without a decent smile.

This happens with all of us boys.
We can laugh our guts out
And talk in roof-shattering tones,
But no one teaches us about the smooth
Transition of emotions like a smile.

The reading between the lines,
And hiding between metaphors.
How it's okay to not have an opinion,
Or mutual insult not the only
Intimate expression-

There's no shine in our eyes,
A chocolate someone offered us
Was decades back and with
Literally, no one to dedicate us
Faintest of poetic lines-

Even from the sidelines, in all
Decency..we too try. But madam,
It's really hard to smile.

Hopeless Romantics

You slide your hair a bit and
The Gulmohars smile.
Your bangles dangle and
Moon decides to steal
Some extra light.

Some immortals are busy
Finding excuses for
Their distractions and
Mere mortals' vulnerabilities
Are justified.

The attempts to tame
The shudder of the evening,
And attempts to captivate
The fragrance of jasmines,
In empty matchboxes.

I've got my lip bitten
By the bees to sing you
Honey-filled lullabies too.
But you can't seem to
Notice any of this do you?

So the Gods have decided
To gather again to declare
"Let there be more light" in unison
For the extra luminescence
You may need to recognize
The hopeless romantics.

The Village I grew Up

The jowar fields and the ragi crop
Have been replaced by the sturdy
Eruption of sugarcane.
The road is all metalled and
The grand old neem tree, cut off.

The old bus stand is in ruins
And the tramp who slept there
Has abandoned his post.
The women don't walk forever
To fetch water and the kids
With no future don't fancy
Flying the kites.

This village I grew up has been
Painted in bright strokes of
Orange and the green now.
And the sparrows have to seek
Permission before they chirp
Or flutter their wings.

There's political correctness
In the bark of the dogs and
The bigots on both sides walk
Safely with stones in their hand.

Thanks to modern medicine,
The elders don't die early now
And in the village I grew up,
New ideas refuse to come out of
The cattle-sheds smothered by
The new stink.

With "The holy and unholy"
Self-contradictions of purification
In "flesh and urine" of cows- my village
Basks in the utopia of an old order.
With a supposed financial growth
As bedrock of its flawed argument.

Lethargy

I often get zoned out into
Long stretches of lethargy.
All goals and ambitions go
Out of the window.

Hobbies and habits trampled
With the chronic urges of
Masturbate-- with the butter of
Procrastination sliding smoothly
On the bread of mindless
Binge-watching mania-

I get caught in a loop of
Guilt-ridden whirlpool that
Sinks deep enough to perch
My charring soul till the bruises
Are visible in my head where
Divergent my ideas brew.

And I try to scream for myself
To save myself from a
Grave that hasn't been dug yet.
But the prayers of an atheist
Are not even answered by
Oneself it seems.

So I'm left here to be smothered
By myself- A master of my own
Destiny preaching slavery-
Left to quench my thirst in the sea
Saying salt water cleanses
The soul that has sinned.

Advice to Younger Self

For some reason, the puberty
Will hit you hard my boy.
An intense sort of rebellion
Will sprout like pubic hair to
Drive you around the edges
Of irrelevant philosophies.

You'll stop believing in God first
And you'll read whatever
Re-enforces your atheism out
Of sheer hate for your father.

And even before college
A sense of existentialism gets
To you and you'll question
The existing systems in place
And the society at large.

And that will trigger your
Innate desire to escape what's
Infront of you-
"This is hard, not meant for me,
I'll wait for the right time."-
Always expecting more from
From life when there's none.

And the decade-long slide of
Hopelessness and regret will
Shine when you look back from
Your thirties, to force you to
Answer the question,

"What advice do you wish to
Give to your younger self?"

After a long pause, you'd wish
To just say "Shave away those
Pubic hair before they sprout".
But you can't, as you may
Wanna be politically correct,

Atleast this time.

Clutter of Words

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What It takes to socialize

For the first time in her life,
Mom asked me for some
Spare money I'm left with.
I wondered, what changed.

She's going to the local market
With the other women,
To fetch vegetables these days.

It took all of her kids to
Learn well, take a job and
Go away from home and then
The husband had to fall ill..
For her to socialise.

I love it when she complains
About the prices of onion
And ridge guard. I'm happy
To see her manage a small

Budget and decide for herself
On the matters she knows well.

I imagine her negotiating with
The vendors over prices of
Brinjal and love it when she blames
The government for the price rise.

And each Saturday, when
The neighboring aunty gives
Her a loud call, I remind myself
The definition of welfare in

Economics as a number of
Choices one makes in a
Day-to-day life.

Gods in love

I know that you look at me
From a hiding and you too
Know how I crave for your
One sighting.

But the invisible wall that's
Laying bricks upon itself
Every time we try to look
Away.

This divide across our streets,
Of thick moustaches and
Flesh laden sarees-
The age-old arch of the village

That hasn't let even
The village goddess marry.

When I crossed your front yard
The other day, my shadow
Touched the contours of
Rangoli you had lain.

The subsequent redemption
Of mine has left cracks in
The arch and the God of
The neighboring village has
Some rigid lines to cross.

An age-old brawl between
The two villages now has been
Initiated by a mortal in love
And you too are invited to

Our festival this time,
We're hitching our Gods.

Beliefs

Some of my friends are
Finding different beliefs.
Some believe in money,
Some in their family-

A wife, kids, and a happy
Ever after.

Some think traveling is
Everything and on their
New hefty bike, they
Commute to office daily.

For some, only Hanuman
Is great, for some screaming
Their devotion in speakers
Is the only way and some

Have gotten hitched to
The-one-who-must-not-
Be-named and the best ones
Have made dogs as their pair.

I don't know about mine,
I just judge and laugh on
My bad days and try not to
Kill myself on the good ones.

Request

When the mellow sun decides
To come up on the faint horizon
Of my village, come as
The earliest light to my house.

And as the early birds go in
Search of their songs and
The butterflies in search of
Colors, come as

The first signs hope when
Mind is still stuck in haze.

Come in as cool breeze if
You wish or swishing wind that
Scatters away all the dust.
Come as a heavy downpour or

The easy shudder that's
Transferred to the leaves.

Come as an omen, come as
Dewdrop or a prayer.
As long as there's no love that
Holds you- come, come.

Hibiscus

The hibiscus that has
Profusely grown like a
Boundary around my house,

Was planted by my aunt
A couple of years ago.

It's besides the one
That has been there from
My childhood.

It's full of unopened buds,
Easily at least 20 Red flowers
Every morning flirting with
Fresh dew.

If my grandpa were alive
Today, he would have been
Filled with excitement to pluck
Each one of those to offer 

Then to all the Gods.
Maybe the almighty would
Have blessed him with
A couple more years of life.

Sad that his expectancy
Fell short by a few flowers.

Enemies of the muse

On every full moon night.
The lake wants to host
The moon.

The moths are the enemy
That wants to feed on
The pie of the light.

The stars are the enemy
That want to fall to have
All the attention they want.

The warevolves and
The vampires. The pragmatists
And the sunlight.

The rain is the enemy that
Wants to ripple the brim by
Shaking up the delight.

You ask me to bring you
The moon too. So I've been
Stealing from the Lake-

Forty-six and counting.
You've been the enemy,
And I have been too..

Unfullfilled

To all the shooting stars
That are just falling.
And all the wishes they
Never fullfill.

To all the letters that
Go unwritten and all
The pens that stutter
Like emotional cripples.

The unworn shoes and
The un-left footprints.
Music discarded and
The songs, forgotten.

The moon has decided
To stop reflecting
The sunlight,
He wants to steal girls-

He's much of a Playboy
Himself these days.

But who's taking care of
The aspiring single lads?
The plant with long,
The narrow, serrated leaves?

The government has
Banned it too.

Architecture of Loneliness

At first, there's an invisible
Demarcation around you,
Within which you get cozy.
Then brick by brick it rises.

This windowless room,
Going no higher than your
Head and no wider than
Your narrow shoulders.

It keeps ricocheting all your
Thoughts back at you.
It's rediscovering yourself
At first.

It's looking within yourself,
Feeling redeemed, then
The self re-enforcement
Grows a thousand layers thick.

You choke on yourself and
Intolerable boredom sets in.

But who's there to talk?
Your voice being repeatedly
Sent back at you by the walls,

You implode in yourself.

In the architecture of loneliness, 

With no shoulders to cry, 

You sulk on your own high and 

That's the saddest kind of life.

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?

Divide

On the night of separation,

We sat across a wall,

Waiting for a storm to pass.

When it did and the wall

Came off. We were 

Changed people.

I wanted to embrace the

Calm. You wanted to fall back 

Into the same brawl.

The divide we sat across

Kept deepening its

Grasp when you asked-

Want to move on?

Bad Tripping

The frozen fog on the window glass

Melts to the warmth of your sigh.

The molten droplets merge into

Each other, creating a trail like a

Band of birds making it out of cages.

It's like Michelangelo's marble shedding 

The extra chunks to absolve herself 

As an angel. 

Like a suicide note of a man who

Killed himself became a paper boat 

After remembering his childhood.

It seems like I am a passenger in 

The spaceship of your reveries.

Where my tragedies bad-trip over 

Your fantasy to grow upon

My unfulfilled longing.

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.

Overthinking

If you could describe her eyes

In your words, is she even a beauty.

And if you don't die trying,

Are you even a poet?

Her beguiled smile if it doesn't 

Break you and the arrogant poet

In you doesn't stay pissed over

The mad lover you're-

For not letting him write.

The euphoria and self-inflicted

Pain- holding each other's hands,

If they don't pull you apart.

Is it even a state of mind?

February

The wail of the withering trees in 

The autumn, can't be left unseen.

And the prison of the thick clothes

On flesh is not so redeeming.

So the spring has set her sails in 

The far reaches of the sea.

Beseeching in front of the autumn

It has decided to summon the greens.

The last leaf in the bareness of

The skeletal almond tree smiles 

A goodbye to the budding new leaf-

As the first human strips open her 

Smothered body to the warm intimacy 

Of the month of February.

Contradictions

For insomniacs, sleep is 

A prayer.

In the kingdom of the blind

Vision is illegal.

A romantic poet in the

Long line of hangmen was

Honored with a noose

Made out of silk.

The goat that escaped

From the butcher shop

Became a mystical lord 

For a while..

So the devil started 

Punishing the bad men.

They were being punished 

With stolen plotlines

From Murakami's novel

For being too good.

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?

The Pride in Question

The Well awaits for
The newly wed bride.

But there is no water on
This summer day-
It has run dry.

The white clouds in
The clear sky fleet restlessly
To bring the nimbus laden.

The sparrows attempt
Songs of Tansen to hail
Upon the rain god.

To protect the village's
Pride, even the village
Goddess is on fast.

The bride steps out of
The threshold with the pot
Gifted by her mother.

The trees in the street
Wish her luck and the thirsty
Cattle wish her luck.

The Well awaited for this
Moment, it wants to wish
The bride, luck. But

On this fateful summer,
The clouds fail to gather
And there's no water.

Stray Stories

He knows someone is watching,
When he goes past that house.

From the backyard of the house
And the darkness of the kitchen.
Threads of her gaze seem to
Hail upon him to heave his heart.

The tonal sounds of her breath,
The rhythmic touch of her foot.
Her unseen face and imagined
Persona stomps on his chest.

So his bicycle breaks sometimes,
His chappals wear. Sometimes
The stone in front of her house
Bleeds his toe and he has to

Take there a moment in pretense
For his sweet pain.

She too wants to rush out to
Directly catch his gaze.
But the neighbouring aunt doesn't
Call out for her in time,

Neither the wanderers come
In time seeking alms.

And the days pass, years roll.
The longing in the eyes never
Transcend down to the hesitant feet.
Never tending to meet-

These stray stories linger
Restlessly in the same street.

Parallel lines

Her lambs sometimes come
Grazing the tender maize
In my field.
My sparrows go to her courtyard
To feed on Jowar grains.

And that's how in stories
We meet.

Her caste is low and mine
Is high- The chasm between
Our streets are parallel lines
That never meet- elders say.

But why the moon on her roof
Sometimes sneaks from
The broken tile to steal a
Glance on my behalf?

And the stars from her dreams
Lead me into a cosmic trance
To make believe in things that
Are not obvious and otherwise?

And when songs late-night,

Carry a tinge of her aroma-

A considerate definition of 

Those parallel lines get to me-

Where they tend to meet at 

Infinity.

Half Hearted Efforts

The job I could have done.
The mountains I could
Have scaled. The lengths
I could have gone to pursue 
Her and the business I
Could have built with my
Friend before I chickened out.

The pens lost, papers torn.
All the discarded paints
And paintings before
They could come to life-

All the half-hearted efforts
On a wishful stretch of life-
Seep beneath the door at
Night like flickering light.

And the kites that were deprived
Of their maiden flight, look
At the paper boats that didn't
See a rainy day-

To ask in unison about
The kid who refused to eat
The jamuns on the ground,
To enjoy the same up above
By climbing the tree.

To A Friend Who Killed Himself

But he was just here yesterday,
Debating about inflation
Farm bills and rural distress.
He had a beer and danced
Like hell to "Dhan te na"
From Kaminey.

Suddenly he was sad for a bit
Concerning his mother.
And was excited again to
Talk about the new deal
He cracked for a big ass
Client.

And in the morning when
It was said he hanged
Himself to death,
Quoting no reason or clue
As to why he did it.

It was shocking, surprising
And mind-boggling.
Disappointing above all.
How could he go without
Saying anything?

When I see his mother-
Her pale eyes brimming
With tears- writing apologies
To empty cradles thinking
It's her mistake-

I try harder to stick my
Ears into the void he has left,
To listen to the possible echoes
Of his unsaid goodbyes-
All the unasked questions
Go unanswered and

The condolences like caged
Birds flutter to mock my
Emptiness that keeps coming
Without a formal invite.

Innocent Crime

This girl in my class, had
Scribbled in her class-book
"I want to marry Ajay".
The other girls found it
And brought it to my notice.

This was in the second standard.
I was the class monitor.
It was a big issue. I was
Embarrassed and kept crying.

The whole class booed her,
She ran out of the class.
I caught up to her to beat
Her up with my chappals-
Innocent mishaps can be a
Big crime in a rural setting.

The incident didn't end there.
My aunt went to her house
To create a ruckus- my
Family Pride was in danger
Because of a little girl.

How unfairly a girl of hardly
Seven can be treated?
I feel ashamed of it.

Sometimes when she passes
By my house with her kid,
Head down.
I too look away, out of shame.

Maybe in a parallel life,
We exchange awkward smiles.
But in this one, the damage
Is done.

Farmers' Cry

You make us grow, and
Compel to sell us at a price
Decided by you.

You steal our plates and
Self-esteem. Savour it
To fart in English.

And if we hold our noses
In disgust, you hold us
In contempt for talking-

In our dialects, while
Your mouth is an actual
Ass that gives away loads of

Shit.

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?

I remembered God

You always gotta remember
'Vithoba' he would say.
Whatever you do, wherever you're.
While eating, shitting, traveling.
Specially before you hop
Into a vehicle. You gotta
Remember his name.

My mother's father- he was
The most spiritual and
Humblest man I've ever met.

He spent most of his life,
In a small farmhouse.
The trees, cattle and poultry
Is all he needed he would say.

He taught me how to- climb
A tree, graft a sapling,
Pick cashews and roast them
To the right taste.

Those winter mornings and his
Little sessions on the tricks to
Cut grass and bundle it in small
Parcels so that I could carry it.

The mythological stories he would
Narrate in the evenings.
About the King and four shepherds.
About the demon who would be reborn
From each drop of his slain blood.

Sometimes he would ask some
Mathematical questions from
His time. And if you answered
He would declare you're the smartest
Kid around.

When he passed away last summer
Due to prostrate cancer,
I received the news late,
As I was elsewhere in a
Meditation camp.

While I waited for the bus to
Return home for the obituary.
I hated the fact that I couldn't cry.
The smell of oily fritters, when it
Wafted past my nose-

I remembered those Saturdays
When he peddled to the local bazaar
To sell vegetables and bought
Fritters and other snacks.

I uttered Vithoba's name while
I stepped into the bus.
The atheist, I'd become as I grew-
It was the first time in years
I remembered God.

End of the world

At the stroke of midnight
Empty beer bottles pile up.
The stench of half-eaten biryani,
And the dirty dishes all
Over the floor.

The shearing pain in
The head of the hangover,
You can't handle-
Orphan written
On your forehead as you
Can't remember your
Father's name.

She comes to mind and
The life you couldn't have
And the unborn children
Scream and you roll over
The floor and cry.

At ten past two,
You think you're gay and
Try to kiss your drunken
Friend beside you.
He slaps you first and
Consoles you into a weird
Sort of existentialim.

An hour later something
Gets into him- he convinces 

You that the world is gonna end.

Douglas Adam takes over
Your drunken head and
Takes you both to
The restaurant at
The edge of the galaxy.

You order masala dosa
And cutting chai and write
Each other eulogies in a hurry
On tissue papers.

At the end of the world,

By nine past four, you understand-
All the fireworks were just
You puking heavily without
Understanding why and
The eulogy sounded so good, 

You really wanna die.

Poems are your children

Poems are your children-
The, could have been,
Would have been and
The actual ones.

The ones you would have
Laughed, cried, and silently
Missed all along.

And as they learn to walk
Through you- some fall
And rise.
Some tumble off a rock
And break their head.

Some come out with a
Limp and you gotta hold
Hands to say it's okay.
Some turn out to be
Mute and blind-

To accommodate them
You learn sign language
And Braille.
Some will top the class,
Some, commit a crime.

The one you wouldn't
Have wanted will make you
Laugh and one you revered
Will, maybe drag you down
The street naked.

But is it immoral to have
Them?
Are you even worthy of
Making that judgment?

When you yourself- a poet-
A bastard out of an
Orgy in your head.
Why not let them take-

Birth out of the random sparks
In your head to run across
The lanes of their fancy?

To reach unintended places

To trigger more sparks-

That might melt down, all

The miserable strongholds. 

The Unborn Child

Met this girl.
Rose-toned, rain-scented.
And things happened.
Love, lust, dreams.

Yeah, dreams.
Rushing in a tiny home
By the edge of the city.
Near a creak.

We dreamed together of
Petting a small panda.
We dreamed like we
Petted it in fact.

And one day. Like all those
One-days in parentheses-
That inevitably happen-
We fell apart.

Goodbyes stretched across
Length of my city,
Reaching only the closed
Doors.

It's been years now.
This house could have been
Bigger and baby-proofed.
The little panda sometimes-

Comes in my dreams to
Rest on my right arm.
The next morning my
Hand aches-

Like the sourness of a half
Remembered memory that
Stares like a cat all day from
Below the dining table.

To Those Who Look Down Younger generations

I miss the old days when we
Killed for food, land and
Most importantly, religion
And God.

There was an emotion in
Picking a weapon of choice.
Machete to a hatchet- neat.
Practicing all through the day-

All through childhood,
All through life-
To kill sometimes and
Mostly die.

We raised children to be
Brave, raised them to stab
In the hearts and we raised
Them to proudly die.

We took pride in killing
While we stared them in the eyes.
And we saw in the eyes while
We raped their wives,
Daughters and mothers.

And when the onslaught
Stopped for a while sometimes-
In the evenings, on Fridays
And maybe on the first week of
Rainy days-

We had our moments to
Store food, pile up wood
And fuck to breed fighters.
How will you understand?

Your generation, who got it
All easy.
How will you understand
What is it like to live?

Loving dogs, appreciating art,
Overeating, obesity and
Cardiac arrest at eighty?
Is that even a living?

Real living you know is-
Killing, dying, and starving

To death before the thirties.
Debating over gender fluidity..
And preaching your kids
Political correctness.

How cute. Learn from us.
Build bombs and destroy
Cities. Get a life by
Destroying everything.

Unconjured Ghost

As a kid, I had fallen in a
Pit full of cattle urine in
The backyard when I was three.
If my uncle hadn't pulled
Me out in time, I was gone.

The buffalo that everyone
Cautioned against,
Got me when I was five.
The horn tore my jaw,
Threw me across and
Some I survived that.

When I was seven the tractor
Ran into the electric pole
While I sat in the driver's seat,
With my father.
Got lucky there too.
I survived.

Later as I grew old.
The electric sockets that
Were kind. The near brush-off
A speeding truck while I
First rode the bike.

The waves that took me
On the beach, and threw me
Back.
All those flues, fevers,
Typhoids and smallpox.
Many die on hospital bed
For medical mistakes-

But thanks to all the nurses
And doctors, who were careful
And sane while treating me.

The dent in the fabric of
The space-time that wants
To flush me out,
Keeps forever waiting and-

My ghost stays unconjured.
And maybe a kid my locality
Sleeps alone at night with
No worries and his bed stays

Dry for another morning.

Too Late

If you disappear for seven years
You'll be presumed dead legally.
Your wife can marry your friend
Without any consequence and

He can write four eulogies each day
For maybe the next couple of years
And have them published without
Anyone's objection.

Maybe a grave in your name
Would dig itself up, sing an
Uncomposed dirge and
Close itself without any funeral.

The winds will be afraid to
Remember your name and the birds
Would be put in captivity to
Forcefully whisper your absence.

The world would have filled
The void you had left and maybe
Your death would be celebrated
With cake and rum each year.

And if you ever decide to come to
Everyone, it would be hard for
The stakeholders to accept you.
And while you stand wondering-

About the dystopian possibilities
Beside the house you built
In the village. Maybe the dog
You had fed once-

May sniff you back into
Existence if you're lucky.
But then again, will you be worthy
Of such acceptance?

Anarchy

Every season when migrants
Come to my village to cut sugarcane.
The Socio-economic scenario of
My village changes.

The chicken prices go up and
The demand for liquor skyrockets.
Those who know a bit of Hindi
Get a bit of importance and when

Someone from their clan utters
A word of our slang, our faces lit up.

One can see makeshift huts
By the road. Kids in messy clothes,
Unkempt hair- who takes care of
Even smaller kids and a bit older ones
Armed with machetes to cut and
Load cane.

Smoke off the burnt stubble in
The evening and small talk in
The street corners and pan shops
Finding usual, unusual references
To the affairs of our men and
Their women-

The smell of anarchy in the air-
Bit of intermixing with outsiders
Exposing the cracks in our social fabric-
And before the concerns-

Get out of hand. It starts pouring in June.
Our seasonal guests would be gone.
Chicken prices come down as
Monsoons become proper resets.

The turmoil in many homes, over the
Inflated prices and debauchery of men
Settles and the reason for tears in
Many kitchens would be owned by

Just the onions again.

Toys of Deprivation

When something glares up

In the night sky and 

The kid who knows about 

The shooting stars makes 

Wishes.

He wishes for more and

More toys.

And after each bomb,

The children who survive,

Run from one end of the city

To the other in search

Of their wishes from

The previous night-

An unlimited supply of

Toys in the form of

Empty shells- Only to 

Fight over better variants-

The ones with a tinge of red 

Over the soot-loaded 

Blackened scraps- it could 

Have been the blood of

One of their parents.

But it doesn't matter,

I guess.

When the streets are washed 

In blood and hunger goes

Beyond stomach and gets 

To ones head. 

Crimson becomes another 

Shade of red and for 

The children without a home,

It's just paint.

Ifs

If I had seen you arguing over
Extra coriander with the vendor.
We could have met that way for
The first time, happy to have settled
Over decent discount on
Vegetables we bought.

Maybe elsewhere I could have
Seen you, swinging on a swing
In the local garden-
We could have met while
Buying an ice cream there.

I would've caught you watching
The moon if we had our
Flats in opposite apartments.
And we could have met
While you thought I eavesdropped
On your high-pitched phone
Conversations.

Or maybe we could have met
At a remote junction waiting for
A shared auto or we could have
Met in a lit-fest fancying works
Of the same poet and bonding
Over his underrated verse.

In this imaginary game of 'ifs'
We could have at least been
Childhood friends who eventually
Marry or A Hindu Muslim who
Elope to finally get killed.

But no I had to be born in this
Grounded village and you in
Some a posch street of Chandigarh-
Only to meet on the Internet and
Have half of everything-
Love, lust, dreams.

Our love was a Schrodinger cat
You know. Alive and dead at
The same on the other side of the door.
The door was a screen and we were
2500 kilometers apart when it was on.

Now that it's been off, I fail to
Measure this thing between us.
Sometimes it's just longing and
Most of the time, a void.

The Clock

A boy roams in the streets
Carrying a clock on his back.
To remind people how much
Time they're left with.

Some are just a couple of
Dance moves away.
Some a few sails in their
Fish boats.

Some are counting hours in
The number of meals
They can have, some in
Things they can own.

The clock slowly turned into
A mirror and people started
To see themselves clearly
On their own.

Someone showed it to
The boy himself and
He became an adult and
Started counting himself on

Another boy who crossed
The street daily,
Seemingly carrying a clock
On his back somehow.

Grind

Why does the dough listen to
The commands of my mother?
Like the clay mixed with water
Dances to the cues of a Potter.

Why do the long woolen threads
Follow the thoughts of my grandmother?
Like those bricks falling in line
To the dictates of a mason.

Like the tones of a nightingale align
With the break of light in the dawn.
Why does the axe follow the hands
Of my father towards the intended

Marks on the wooden log?

And the marbles dance impeccably
On kids' fingers in the street and
Kites fly higher and higher with
Each jerk of the tread.

Why do my words run seamlessly,
Upon your instance like
Hailing of fragrance in the garden
Of longing.

And the dreams run wild and
The rainbows adorn the dull sky
As if you walk past my house
Every midnight.

Dementia

Each sunrise brings a little

Less of you and each sunset 

Takes away a little more.

Today, seems I've forgotten 

Your nose. 

A faint memory of what it

Looked like remains-- But I'm not sure.

I can't recall if it was pierced or

What kind of nose ring you wore.

Sometimes I wonder about

The strands of hair you often 

Slid behind your left ear.

Did you really do it or it's just

A memory of you fused with

Bollywood cliches-- I don't know.

It's the entirety of your face 

These days and I'm confused about 

The spelling of your name-

Whether it should come with

'i' after D, or 'ee' - I don't know.

What a disgrace.

It's not seamless. Recalling, 

Demands deliberate efforts.

It's like sketching your image

And the artist becomes less

Skillful after each try.

The mistakes keep increasing

And the need to mend bad strokes,

Wears down the paper sometimes.

And this distance between you

And me widens like lengthening 

Of our shadows against the setting sun-

The darkness ultimately feeds on it

Into forgetfulness and the sun 

The next day brings a little less.