Waning...

Uninspired
The dog buried in ancient sand
Across the road.
Waiting for an audience to perish.
Each moment yawns,
Each hunger lives,
Drawn out
With broken claws.

Amidst noises in the head
Some on the streets.
Turning slowly into a wrinkled speck
And then a Lump, Love, History.
Today bows out
The Uninspired dog,
And Tomorrow they shall,
Play Cat and Mouse.

Over Tea & Coffee

With flushed cheeks and stirred minds, we moved to our next cup. Warm lemon water in heavy mugs. Tea-bags and sugar bags lying beside silently...all awaiting nemesis. The big cup of Aztec already gulped,  our talk had now grown more direct, her company more life-like. I could see those hands move like a juggler's.

I answered her the way I mostly do while "opening up". Those very lines, with all the nonchalance, all the sanity. Again and again. Like a writer remembering his oft-quoted quotes, long after he has overcome the conviction that had gone into their making. Smart and sharp. Even intelligent. And generously aloof. Self-critical, sans self-pity.

Almost as a habit, I tried reading the effect my wise words were having on her, wishing she would feel the strength of my carefully-framed convictions. She smiled with twinkled eyes. Like older women usually do, having discovered the hollow in the souls of their younger companions. In a single moment I felt, she had metamorphosed into another. With a passionate adjustment of her veil she set herself up. And before I could decide whether she was agitated, offended or effervescent, words came tumbling out in that strangely powerful english...the way they had never before:

"You do not know my dear! All this talk, all this writing, this experience, your and all you see of others, become zero. You will think, "oh my god, what was I doing all my life? Before this? Where did I waste my breath and did not come to him sooner?" All this years without affection will look a waste. You will be transformed. Love has strange powers. And then you say to yourself- "I was such a fool!""

She took out a picture and sighed, remembering the one month and one week of marriage she had lived, before coming to India for seven years. His Kurdish poems by her side, the desire to translate them for the world, and the resolve of being together someday again. She had called it Love.

I sat there quietly, seeking the darkness of the streets outside...the brew had begun to melt the heart, freeze the mind.

In Pursuit...

The motto is to fake motivation. The idea is to sound profound. Even when bitterness seeps into the air all around. Even when you inhale nitrogen dioxide all the time and stand in queues to use washrooms. 
Autowallahs are the new bosses, temple-priests the untiring, unbeatable, good old, very old, villains.


And then to seek poetry, to pursue sheer words all life. 
"Arre oye saala beep beep beep and beep beep beep..." sayeth one bus-conductor to another, hanging from the rattled wooden vehicle in a clogged streets. Clogged streets, worse than clogged drains. But, you MUST MUST MUST seek poetry I say! Pure poetry.


To write without cynicism, to write without spite, to write with deep commitment, to write with honesty and warmth. Lets write and mock the breed of the Romantics, or lets etch realistically and defeat Zola. All that the soul needs is to pretend. Pretend Art.


Love too. And shove perhaps. And hug and smug. And then a simple mug.
What else? People. More and more, tumbling in and out of Life like a can of worms badly shut. Talk, stop, listen but do not touch them.


The Sun is shouting from somewhere in the Sky, slapping more rays on our heads. Get up and run the race. The merry-go-round awaits the beggar-kids, the woman sitting near the rail tracks and the young girl repairing her shoes again and again and again with her two-penny.


Happy New Year we shall sing in a few days!
Happy happy it must be.
And I shall write Poetry.