The Sky

The ominous sky hung all over me since Saturday, and followed me till I lost track of time. Not sure which day and season it was, when I saw those crows watching over from the cables that criss-crossed in the sky at the signal, as a continuation to that ominous feeling.


Nobody seemed aware of the sky they were under. They all moved eagerly in a random space thinking everything was alright. The sky just din’t bother them, neither the heat, nor the crows, whereas I walked as plainly as I could, trying to go unnoticed, just when I heard the minacious thunder … THE WARNING!Had someone registered my effort to go unnoticed? Before I could even bat my eyelid, the leaves were rustled vigorously by the thunder storm. I imagined windows banging against the panes reminding me of the brittle existence. I stood passively dumbstruck…


…I continue to stand under the sky that I can’t escape!

Wisps Of Breath

When I was burning with a fever, so high it made my eyes burn and my mind turn lucid yet delirious, I saw a dream. Bundled on the floor of an old desert jeep, I slept half-mad with fever, and with the desert silence howling in my over-sensitive ears. I saw my mother, a woman who claimed to be my mother, selling me to the strains of bedouin music, that which her hips swayed away to. The haunting madness of the music and the bellowing retching out the skin of the desert. I forgot to pin a butterfly, that I had caught. The negotiations continued, in the midst of smoke, the enragingly lingering music, the intoxication, and the rancid belches that I was being pawned against.

Rain-song

Of countless wounded nights, dream parched endless nights. Ouestions keep pouring, I try in vain to fill in the empty cabinets of my afternoons with the questions, hesitating to answer. Hesitating. The roads to my happiness are twisted. It's all like a line puzzle wherein I spend all the endless nights trying to straighten them and find my way out. Trying? May be I've given up, given up everything. One survives, ccan one survive without hopes, wishes and beliefs? May be one can, a non-confirmist may be an atheist. What am I?
My soul is a perinnial source of pain for me. It loves wallowing in momentary sorrows and then performs some kind of ablution in the putrid pain. The stench never leaves. I love gifting myself loads of pain and something is really funny about buying myself pain and gifting it to myself.

The Saga of Dead Birds

The Saga of Dead Birds
The dead birds sat perched on an abandoned electric wire, trying to shake the dead wind under their wings. The one with fish eyes spoke “ Have you noticed how the rat has eaten our bodies? There is one entire bone that lies a meter from where I fell dead. It then started devouring my eyes, see I don’t have the left one.” When the rest of them turned to look at him, instead of the left eye there was a worm-eaten emptiness, a hole.
The one with a missing wing observed that fish eye was actually a little sad. Missing wing flapped his dead wing in the dead air and tried looking into the vastness and think, but his thoughts were random and he could not concentrate on anything so he just let out a sigh.
Broken-beak sat with an open-beak expression which gave others the impression that he was either parched or hungry, always ready for someone to beak-feed him. He was the youngest of them all and had died while trying his maiden flight, he had landed on the same electric wire that he was perched on, a current had passed through his frail body, and he had landed with a ‘plop’ on the ground below while mama crow crawed madly. He still did not believe in his lightness of being. He had a broken beak from the fall and the night sweepers had swept his remnants into the sewage before he could regain his senses. He always wondered had they not swept his body away he would have been alive and learning to fly.
Broken-beak never understood why Fish-eye complained of his missing eye and blamed the rat when his ma had mentioned that Fish-eye had lost it over a property dispute. He had lived on the top-most branch of the neem tree with his brother and his brother’s wife. Broken-beak had always wondered if it was a property dispute or the brother’s wife that had resulted in the missing eye. One- wing sighed again, breaking Broken-beak’s thought process. One-wing always sighed, he was always sighing, he seldom spoke and when he opened his mouth it was to utter a loud sigh. Broken-beak had tried to indulge him in a conversation but that had only resulted in One-wing uttering a painful sigh which made Broken-beak feel guilty.
Fish-eye fixed his one-eyed glance on one-wing. He was not particularly happy, there were numerous desires that remained unfulfilled after the stormy night when he had hit the electric wire and got electrocuted. Images of the shiny black beak of his Sister-in-law flashed before his single-eyed memory, and the fight that he had crewed in his defense. His glance shifted from One-wing to Broken-beak. He felt out of place. He looked down to see the rat dragging his worm-eaten body from the waste-bin to its den leaving a trail of worms that got rubbed off.
Broken-beak was concentrating on the worms, he found them quite interesting. He felt as if their action of taking possession of the same was authoritarian, as if they had a right to do what they were doing. He wondered if worms would have taken possession of his body and made themselves comfortable in that stench. He was suddenly overcome by gloom, a gloom that came from nowhere, and took possession of his matterless being. He had a tremendous urge to stare at his own worm-eaten body being dragged by a rat into its hole. He wanted to discover the stench of his rotten bones, flesh and feathers.
One-wing was sighing all the while thinking of his experienced life that had ended in a heat- stroke on the same electric wire that he was perched on, and the rat had chewed off one of his wings. He saw all the vehicles wheezing past the dead electric pole that he was perched on. He never had the time to ruminate over his dead one-winged body because it had been picked by a street urchin, smashed and crushed till there were bits and pieces of it on the pavement and the base of the pole, his mashed brains were stuck to the cement pavement brick that the boy had used. Before his spirit had separated from his body, there was an argument among the three urchins as to who could mash the dead bird to smithereens. One-wing had saved his spirit in the nick of time. He had felt the sharp pain of the rat's teeth digging into his feathers and penetrating his flesh while he sank into the painless oblivion. The ants dragging miniature pieces of his smashed brain in assembly line. One-wing did not feel the pain anymore. He wondered if there were pieces of his brain still sticking to the pavement brick. He thought he saw the ants still making a beeline for collecting the blackened tissues. He sighed again.
Fish-eye liked his Sister-in-law from the very first sight but his brother never appreciated the kind of attention that Fish-eye gave to his wife, he even thought that Fish-eye ought to have his own nest somewhere else. Fish-eye could not understand why his brother had a problem sharing his wife, after all they were not humans, well, humans for that matter...well lets not drag them into this. It so happened one night that Fish-eye got into this duel with his brother and got his eye pecked out. Fish-eye reeled with the piercing pain that surged forth. That led him to lose his balance and hit the electric wire.
Broken-beak suddenly had this feeling that he could make the black mass floating in the drain below to be his body. He felt a dryness in his mouth and the urge to take a plunge into that slimy black water and feel the slackness of his drenched corpse. But he could not move, he remained transfixed to the electric wire. So did the others, Fish-eye oggling at his rotten corpse, One-wing sighing over his scattered and smashed brains and Broken-beak with a parched open-beak awaiting.
I heard that the authorities have decided to build a metro-line that requires them to dis the unused electric-pole near the neem tree. The neem tree also has to be felled. I woke up one night imagining the sigh of One-wing or the incessant crawing of the dislocated birds, may be another property dispute. Last I heard that the wires were all wound and taken away by the local cable operator on a concessional rate who later converted them to illegal hooks providing free cable to the slum dwellers and running into a loss himself.
I went to look for one-wing's brains and had almost discovered them when an assembly of ants and a scurrying rat diverted my attention. There was a small broken beak near the spot where the neem tree was.

OrangePool

I ride on Crimson Tides,

and sail on ochre wind,

and some times I stop and breathe some of Rilke's couplets,

and then, sliding from phosphoresecent butterfly-wings,

I dive in to my orange pool

brimmed with Gabo's Rain and Lorca's whispers...

Though my Grace and Khanolkar never leave me alone...

Algae

I push them into the pond because I believe that there is a treasure somewhere deep down in the water burried by mermaids who had once been swept with the ocean tides to the pond. I can't swim, I don't like to wet my feet so I ask others to treasure hunt for me.

Adam's Autobiography

Satan lured her
Apple lured her
Snake lured her

HE came back and saw us hiding,
HE found the Apocalypse absurd,
HE left us with a bane.

Now,

I stand here
I watch my posterity
I regret.