A Thought Beyond Your Dot

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Annoying glitch,
A pestering itch,
the one that spreads - that sort,
Was your secret lie,
That did not die
in walls your mind had wrought.

Ignorant waste,
Spilled in haste,
On your fabric made a blot.
But one mistake
Could not so break
your threads of sincere thought:

You caught yourself
And brought yourself
Confessed yourself distraught.
But I wish
you had once taught yourself
To think beyond your dot...

In your selfish guilt
you walked away
When I forgave - forgot.
You hid yourself
You slid yourself
When your voice I sought.

I wish
you had once taught yourself
To think beyond your dot.

Leaves in Autumn

frangipanis, chalk and charcoal on handmade paper, sujaandas

It's time to cut off a branch - along with its many leaves - young purple ones that have just started growing, some dark green firmly attached ones, and others that are brown and yellow and would fall off anyway. All of them add colour to my life. Attachments, weak and strong, that on the whole bind me so strongly to Bombay. Some ties that have names and ties that often were hard to categorize. It's struck me suddenly that my life will change: I will no longer live with the P. Lewises of Walton Road. I will no longer climb the wooden staircase carefully so that I do not step on the cat that sleeps on the landing. I will no longer take bus number 3 to Navy Nagar. I will no longer show the hideous pink ID card at the TIFR gate. And the shopkeeper near Electric House, who gives the customary smile of recognition, will soon have new customers to attend to.

There's so much unfinished, there's so much that needs closure, and this abruptness makes me uneasy. There have been relationships that have grown, many that have not grown, and many more that could have grown. Many, that have been stifled at the inception. Many for which distance made conversation impossible, and many for which conversation made closeness impossible...and a few for which I'm ready to cover any distance for a conversation. It's time to leave all of it and go. The strongest leaf must wither and eventually fall. It's time to cut off a chunk of me, with the hope that it would grow back soon... it always does. Though this time it'll be hard, it'll be hard to accept that I will not see many that I love so dearly for a long, long time.

The Ego of Wisdom

(written in a nursery rhyme kind of a way coz i'm suddenly getting drawn to the simplicity of rhythm)



The fairy swamp had an eerie feel,
With clover carpets by the ocean teal,
With firefly lamps and musky mud,
With succulent slugs and a lily-bud.
Fresh sea-salt and marsh gas in air
and mangroves lifting their skirts with care.
Curtains drawn of silken spider thread,
Mushrooms breathe with gills they spread.

Immersed neck deep in clover quartets,
a lone frog croaked with a pair of crickets...
...a symphony of sorts as they did prance;
While an owl on a branch looked askance,
and frowned, is this some dance by any chance?
Look at thee, the two of three! Humouring a frog!
Piercing the peace, in our beautiful bog!

The crickets gathered their violin strings,
The frog, his drum and feet on springs,

and the trio sang in a triple beat,
and they jumped on alternate feet:

Two plus one they say is three,
an odd number we must agree,
A little less than pi and almost e,
The first prime on the number tree,
Three bears did Goldilocks behold,
To Macbeth spoke three witches old,
Milford has over it three moons,
and Aladdin was given three boons,
In three base pairs is DNA read.
Three are worlds we shall tread.
Plato split the soul in three,
In three colours the world we see,
Chimera and Cerberus have three heads each,
Three are notes in every chord we screech.
Even thy name, Owl, has letters three
Then why can this trio not sing as free?

The wise owl raised a keen eyebrow,
His voice was low and he spoke just as slow...
I am the Owl, with a three letter name,
I'll beat you at your silly rhyming game,
I shall part your souls in three times three,
Under the three armed branch of this tree.
Badluck comes in threes, they say,
To your three Gods you may now pray,
I love three course meals perched on a log,
especially crickets and a rebellious frog!

So dived the owl and ate the three of them ,
The frog and crickets, with bones and stem.
Others thence came out in two and four
And they questioned not the owl anymore.

futility on a lazy afternoon

Off his feet,
a crow takes off,
perhaps a little clumsily,
frowning with a scoff
at the static rocks at the sea-face.
Eccentric winds from the bay
lift his form with ease;
Black, strong, and sly,
in the sunny winter sea breeze,
sending him off on an elliptical trace.

A lazy wave
tumbles in, breaks and ebbs,
The wind leaves white messages
in curious cirrus-cloud webs...
Who reads them this winter afternoon?
The ponderous Gulmohur
has caught yet another plastic kite;
Yet another leaf twirls down,
Down an invisible helix in flight
to meet his comrades soon.

An obese bumblebee
weighs down a proud marigold deposed...
And the crow eventually returns,
his claws carefully, tightly closed,
holding onto nothing from a pointless trip.
The static rocks welcome him back.
The sea gapes in dull silence.
On this lazy afternoon that's been so slack,
he clambers on the rocks and gets a grip.